Too many to care for
by Lanny-Sama
Summary: A Tentaspy finally escapes the BLU med-bay after several long months of experiments, one of them still ongoing...
1. Chapter 1

**Too many to care for**

A Spy crawls through a sewer, his trademark suit absent, his blue mask only a moldy scrap of fabric over his head and a faint trail of blood following him. He frantically drags himself through the pipes in the sewers, dirty water splashing in his face and yellow eyes glowing dimly in the darkness of the pipes. His stomach is heavily bloated and scrapes over the concrete painfully, but he has learned to ignore it over the past few months. Right now, escape is far more important! It doesn't matter that there is no true escape from the base. He just needs to get away! Through the water behind him, eight blue tentacles sweep through the shallow water, their muscles and bonelessness still an unfamiliar sensation to the Spy.

His split claws scrape over the concrete pipes in panic as he reaches the end of the pipe and tumbles down into a lower part of the sewer with a loud splash. He lets himself sink to the bottom, curling into a small ball with a strangled noise of pain and panic as a jab of agony rushes through his insides.

He doesn't know how he managed to escape the Medics clutches this time. He should have failed, just like all the other times where he had tried to escape, but some unimaginable luck must be on his side. There must have been _something_ to aid in his escape, but his memory refuses to co-operate. It had all happened in a blur, one moment he was strapped down on a table inside the medbay, the next he was desperately clawing and crawling towards the sewers, the bruises of his restrains still visible on his wrists and trail of blood following him over the white tiles.

Another cramp jerks him from his thoughts, and he lets out a terrified little gasp as something seems to clench and move within his lower stomach. He clenches his jaw and forces himself to move on. Who knows what that blasted Medic did with his insides during all those horrid experiments? It hurts, but he'd rather die of an internal rupture than find himself beneath that gleaming scalpel and those glinting spectacles again. Oh he feels so awfully bloated, so sick, big, heavy and boneless... But bloated above all.

He had been getting... noticeably bigger in the last few months. He'd blamed it on the excessive amounts of nutrients and food Medic forced into him, combined with the lack of exercise in his confines, but after his intestines had started to move he had begun to doubt it was just weight gain. The moving only started a few months back, but it had gotten worse with every week. It had been just a tinge in the beginning, as if the Medic forgot to take a piece of equipment out of his bowels, but the medic had blatantly ignored Spy when he had panicked about the alien feeling inside him, instead trying to distract him with more food and the promise of a nice swim.

Spy lets out a high pitched wheeze when his intestines spasm again.

It's relatively safe this far into the sewers, the BLU base and its insane Doctor far behind him. The man won't find him here, at least not until much later, but he can't rest yet. If he stops moving now, he won't be getting up for a long time. This is not the right place, not safe enough to pass out, not confined enough to be hidden. He needs to find place to hide, he can't pas out in plain sight!

He can barely move himself through the painful cramps, but he pushes himself on, looking out for shelter. Ah, there! A large sewer pipe, broken off from the system, lies deep in the water, half buried in the sand. It look uninviting, cold, evil, dark and oh so very safe! He immediately dives down and drags himself inside, slumping down onto the cold concrete of the pipe with a pained moan. He folds his trembling hands over his stomach, as his insides seems to tear with every movement he makes. He throws back his head and squeezes his eyes shut, gasping wildly and holding back his cries of agony.

"Nnnnnggghhhh!"

It hurts unlike any torture, and Spy knows torture all too well, but agony like this one is not one he ever encountered before! Those pains had been superficial, once he had known how to retract himself from it, but this pain is rooted inside him, not lessening no matter what he tries! It's in a place that no fist, foot or knife can reach without killing, a place that isn't supposed to have _nerves._ Spy's breath comes in superficial gasps and all his limbs shake and tremble without control.

Almost. It's almost time...

More cramps, and the water around Spy slowly fills with blood and slime. He claws at the concrete uselessly and clenches his eyes shut as his body almost seems to be bursting. So bloated...maybe it's constipation of some sort? It wouldn't be very surprising, knowing that monstrous doctor, he could have a cereal box sewn into his stomach! He doesn't have much time to mull it over as a violent cramp demands his attention once again. In an attempt to soothe the pain he turns onto his back and spreads his tentacles over the sides of the pipe, leaving his underside completely exposed to the cold water. He makes a panicked noise, almost a sobbing whimper, as he again feels something wriggling about inside him.

For a moment the pain seems to ebb away, only to come back like an electric shock! His breath catches in his throat as his muscles seize up, and a moment later it's as if the moving thing inside him slips into a narrow tube inside his body!

It feels unlike anything he ever felt before, it feels like-...Oh god. What did that german son of a whore do to him during those blasted experiments? Inside him he can feel the presence of a long fleshy tube, leading from his lower belly to a spot right beneath his mantle. Wild panic stuck in his throat, he moves a shaky tentacle over his lower part, the sensitive limb finding a broad and slippery slit.

Dear God! Spy's breathing starts coming with wheezing squeaks as his tentacle touches over an opening he never believed could exist on a man! Is it... No! The Medic...He wouldn't! H-he couldn't-! Another heavy cramp cripples the Spy and his train of thought is interrupted as the thing inside his newly discovered orifice slides downward every so slightly, coming to a halt halfway and moving slightly from within the tight confines of the Spy's insides!

It's stuck. Oh no. No no no. It has to come out. No matter what it is, it has to come out right NOW! Spy lets out a panicked wheeze, and pushes.

Agonizingly slow, the thing inside him works its way downwards, only to halt again a few inches further, and the Spy starts shaking out of desperation. How long will he have to endure this torment? When will it be out? Before he can dwell on the gaping pit of hopelessness, another cramp ripples through him, and more out of shock than anything else, Spy pushes again. Immediately the wriggling thing moves downwards, and a moment of pain later he feels a slimy, wriggling thing slipping out of his raw opening.

A strange noise, disrupted by the water reaches his ears and Spy cringes at the alien he dare to look? Does he really want to see what the insane doctor put inside him?

The pain doesn't pause, but Spy reaches downwards, his hands trembling in fear and doubt. He has to know, pain or no pain! His clawed hand brushes over a slippery thing, roughly the size of a fist, and he yanks back his hand in apprehension when it moves at his touch. The noise sounds again, unpracticed small and strange... Spy forces his trembling hand to reach down again to see the thing that had been tormenting him from the inside out.

He grabs it before he can convince himself to let it lie, and quickly brings it up to face-level.

Two glowing yellow eyes squint up at him, a small mouth filled up with tiny sharp teeth closing and opening like a fish, two small human hands wrapping themselves tightly around his thumb, and eight, tiny, slimy, wriggling tentacles slowly coiling around the Spy's hand.

Spy screeches in horror, and an instant later the small creature's tiny bones are crushed between his palm and the solid concrete pipe with a sickening crunch.

Spy breathes out in panicked wheezes as he frantically tries to scrub the creature's remains off his hand. He doesn't get too far as the awful cramps continue, and he can feel another creature struggling towards the exit of his body. More than one? Spy lets out a sobbing moan and lies back shakily, submitting to the pain and pushing again. Better out than in!

The second one finds the exit in a single push, and its cry resonates through the water eerily. Spy's hands tremble as he picks the remaining blood and flesh off them, and he tries his best to ignores the pathetic cries of the miniature monster at his tentacle's ends, his breathing loud in his ear. By the time the third creature finds its way out, the Spy has started chewing on his fingers, desperate for any distraction from the fact that he is_ giving birth._

He almost starts crying when the fourth creature comes, but he keeps the sobs at bay by gnawing his fingers until they bleed. Four of the wretched things found their way outside already, and there is still no sign of it stopping! The fifth and sixth seem to come both at the same time, sending a sharp jolt through the Spy that makes his tentacles spasm without control. How long will this go on?

At the eighth one, the pain from his fingers is no longer enough to keep him from sobbing in desperation and humiliation. All his muscles ache from the tenseness straining his body and the slit on his underside feels stretched and ripped.

At the eleventh one, he starts wondering if it would ever come to an end. His fingers are bleeding profusely, but he doesn't stop sinking his teeth into them. It overpowers the pain of the cramps, and the horrible shame... Oh god, how many more are going to come out? His vision swims with every movement he makes and he feels dizzy from bloodloss.

After the thirteenth, he stops counting. Every seven to ten minutes, the cycle repeats itself. Pain, cramp, pushing, and a slimy creature slipping out of him. He fervently ignores the small cries that emanate from beneath his mantle, not wanting to think about the disgusting monstrosities sharing the sewer pipe with him, and tries to find a happier place.

Thing after thing, monster after monster, baby after baby, cry after cry... It seems to last forever!

Spy is about to knocking himself out when finally, finally the creatures stop coming. The cramps still ripple through him, but less strong, and he can no longer feel something moving inside of him. His insides are finally empty. No more wriggling movement, no more pushing... Just a strange emptiness and a litter of itty bitty tentacled things lying beneath him.

Had Spy been feeling any better better, he might have swiped them out of the sewer pipe with his tentacles, or snapped their tiny necks with his bare hands, but he is too tired and dizzy to even lift his head. The pain slowly starts ebbing away and Spy falls asleep, finally finding the escape he's been looking for.

**This is the kind of story I came up with at night. There will be more of this in the near future, so either barricade your internet or keep an eye out. Or just passively click away. I dunno. But there will be more! Disclaimer here because it looked derpy on the top: I do not own TF2 or the Tentaspy concept.**

**Review if you have something to say, I reply to every review I can reply to. **

**Lanny-Sama **


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Chapter two. Do not own, yadda yadda, just get it over with. **

****When Spy wakes to the sound of his screeching alarm clock, his eyes still closed, he momentarily panics. The tentacles, the experiments, the pain! But then he remembers. He is in Paris, has been there for several weeks in fact. He left that stupid war far behind him. He's in a fancy hotel room with last night's lover still lying next to him, the hangover that comes with a night of good fun making the alarm even more obnoxious. Hah! Just a dream. By far the most terrifying of all, but a simple dream nonetheless.

Spy smiles drowsily and chuckles. Tentacled babies, experiments... He must've really overdone it with the wine last night, having such weird dreams. Then again, what is a party without a good drink? Spy sighs contently. He has to pick up his new custom-tailored suit, brought in from Italy just yesterday evening. He is already looking forward to slipping into the brand new clothes, showing them off to the world.

Ahh... Nothing better than spending your well-earned money on the things you truly want. No more filthy bushmen to soil expensive suits, no more bad coffee, no more cheap-brand cigarettes, no more fear of insane colleagues. Just Paris, luxury, pleasure and rest.

Hm...what will he be doing today besides picking up his suit? So many options, so many possibilities, so much money to spend...

Maybe another trip to the barber? Spy finds such a pleasure to be able to fret over his hair again. After so many years of flattening it under his mask, it's liberating to feel the breeze rush through it. Oh, yet another good idea pops into his mind. Driving over the country in his roadster, just to feel the wind blazing through his hair...

Or he'll go visit one of the newer restaurants in Paris tonight! In his absence, quite a lot of them had been opened. Would he go for the good old French cuisine, or something more exotic, like Japanese cooking? Choices, choices. He'll just have to pick one during his early evening walk. It's not like the bills matter to him, he has enough money to last several lifetimes!

And even if his money should ever run out, there is always work for a Spy. A few pictures here, a bit of blackmail there, a small murder... A slice of pastry! Or whatever Scout used to say. Just to keep a small edge of danger to his pleasurable life in the most beautiful part of Paris!

But firstly and most importantly, he'll demand a new alarm clock from the Hotel owners. What 5 star hotel equips their Master suite with a terrible radio such as this? The complaints-desk will be having a rough time today, that's for sure!

With an annoyed grunt Spy reaches out to cut off the sound of the soon-to-be-annahilated alarm clock.

His dream is shattered as his clawed hand hits solid wet concrete with an audible 'tick'. His eyes finally snap open, and he is met with a curved concrete wall, a blue-ish splotch of flesh plastered on it. The screeching continues, and he tears his gaze from the unforgiving concrete, now realizing what the sound is. He can't stop himself, and he looks.

Dozens of wriggling, disgusting, screeching, slimy monsters lie on the bottom of the pipe, just a few inches away from the Spy, screaming like banshee's straight out of hell. The soft light from the barely risen sun glints oniously on the slippery tentacled mess. Gaping little mouths screech and cry, and their bluish skin glimmers with a sheen of old blood and slime. Spy gags at the sight and hastily scrambles away from the clutter, his stomach seemingly determined to spill what little contents it has.

The screams ring in his ears, and Spy flees the pipe, gagging when one of his tentacles brushes over the pile of things. He swims away from the litter as fast as his pained body allows him, not stopping until the piercing cries have faded. Spy gags again and pressed himself against a nearby wall, his entire body trembling and his insides twisting in panic and pain. It hadn't been a nightmare. How he wishes it had been, but it's a cruel reality. It happened.

His breath comes in superficial gasps and he hugs his tentacles to his chest in search for comfort, squeezing the slimy limbs until they ache. No. Stop panicking. Spies don't panic! Spies are in control, keep their cool and have a solution for any problem in their way.

"I will deal with zhis... This, this is nothing." He has dealt with things much worse than torture, seen the path to the deepest parts of hell and back, and this is just another obstacle in his path. One that he will overcome, just like all the others!

The strong words don't stop the tell-tale shaking of his shoulders and the sobs sounding through the sewers. The sound is alien to his ears, ugly, halfheartedly repressed, and ragged. He hasn't cried since the first time he was tortured, and in the ugliness of his self-pity, he finds relief. He cries for the loss of his legs, the birthing, his lost loves, his mother, his father, his job, the torture, the death of his cat, not sharing his smokes with the team, making fun of Scout about being a virgin... Everything comes spilling out all at once, breaking through the stoic walls around his carefully hidden feelings.

He cries far longer than he ever remembered doing, and in the end he's completely exhausted. He just lies in the sewers, feeling sorry for himself. Everyone deserves that every once in a while, and Spy believes he has some serious catching up to do when it comes to that apartment. The end of his cry-athon comes with sheer exhaustion and hunger, his stomach clenching painfully and his head spinning.

Spy lets out a shuddering sigh and forces himself onto his elbows lamely, but a violent shock wave accompanied by a thunderous BOOM instantly brings his half-hearted attempt to a startled flurry of limbs, Spy's elbow roughly connecting with the wall and sending a violent shock shuddering up his arm. Right above him, a rain of blood and flesh breaks the surface of the water. Spy presses himself against the wall with a panicked noise, and tries to calm himself as the scent of blood fills his nose through the filthy waters.

The disembodied head of a Heavy slowly sinks towards the bottom, followed closely by its huge fleshy torso and severed legs. Spy's stomach growls, and he clutches his mid-section in repulsion and hunger. When was the last time he ate? No, scratch that, when was the last time that madman of a Medic had given him the liberty of eating something that was NOT human meat? He doesn't linger too long on the thought, too hungry to go into deep thought. Spy reaches out to the sinking body and starts rummaging through the uniform with shivering hands. Almost all Heavies carry food to the battlefield to sustain their morbid obesity, and Spy is starving. He can't deny that the smell of the Heavy's blood is making his stomach clench in hunger, but he doesn't want to give in unless he needs to.

It had been one of Medic's bright idea's to see if he could get Spy to eat humans. "To spare money and time!" He'd said that after yanking Spy's teeth out to replace them with sharper ones. Spy still remembers the day where Medic didn't have to force it down his throat anymore. "It was quite a challenge, that brain surgery! Worked out well don't you think? We'll work on your obedience after we finish the ongoing experiment!" Spy hadn't known what the Medic had meant by "ongoing experiment" back then. He sure as hell does now!

A second explosion sounds from above, and Spy flinches. He returns his gaze to the Heavy, and his stomach clenches in hunger again. He hastily pulls the bullet belt off the corpse with a few shaky jerks, and reaches into the large vest where he knows the Heavies keep their secondary weapon. His hands brush over a cold barrel, and he pulls out a standard shotgun. He moans in defeat and disappointment. The only class known for carrying edible food around the battlefield, and today he chose to carry his shotgun.

He lets the shotgun float to the bottom of the sewers mindlessly, the smell of blood in the water making his stomach hurt. The smell isn't at all unpleasant to Spy, and he can't find it in himself to resist for the sake of some silent resistance against the BLU Medic.

He would've liked to say that he had an internal debate, a fight for the remaining parts of humanity left in him, but the decision to eat the Heavy is made in a mere second. Spy wraps his tentacles around the massive torso,dragging it to a more sheltered place to eat, already tasting the blood and flesh ever so slightly through the suckers on his strange boneless limbs.

Once settled, Spy bites down without hesitation. The charred flesh yields quickly to his sharp teeth and leaks the last remaining drops of blood into the filthy waters of the sewer. Spy tears into the thick shoulder and growls savagely, ripping the flesh off the bones with the grace of a starved wolf, desperate to eat as much as he can in a single go.

His teeth scrape against bone roughly at the end his ravenous attack, but the tentacled Spy doesn't care. He eats until he feels sick, and even then he keeps his mouth on the corpse, chewing slowly on the remains and savoring the aftertaste of food. It's scary, he realizes, to no longer be disturbed by his hunger for human flesh. It doesn't feel wrong to eat men. Credit where its due, Medic is a genius in his own right. Any objection at all comes from his mind, not from his gut. It's a learned reaction, a fake one, not a true one. People from the past had often told him that he was a soulless monster.

Spy is slowly starting to believe them.

It won't be long until the BLU Medic will try to find him and capture him, without a doubt to continue his horrid experiments and attempts at training. Maybe even another take on the experiment of pregnancy! The Spy trembles violently at the memory of the squirming abomination wrapping itself around his hand, and he swears he can feel crushed flesh on the palm of his hand. No! He doesn't want to think about last night, he doesn't want to think about the last past MONTHS!

Spy scratches at the palm of his hand, slowly curling into a small ball as the thoughts refuse to go where he wants them to. He swears he can feel something creeping to the unnatural opening in his body, feels the slimy wriggling of the creatures inside him once again, the fleshy gap stretching to spill out a defect of nature. Suddenly his recently filled stomach feels too big, too bloated, like its once again filled with the creatures that inhabited him just mere hours ago.

He vomits before he can stop himself, and the water colors a disgusting reddish brown with his stomach's content. The disgusting taste of bile and the stressful clenching of his stomach is enough to distract him from the haunting memories of the birth, and he focuses of the burning of his throat and the disgusting taste lingering in his mouth.

He wishes for a pack of cigarettes more fervently than ever before.


	3. Chapter 3

Escaping.

Spy takes a moment to envision it, life outside of the prisons of the RED BLU-area, in the endless body of water called the sea. The thought of the sea somewhat calms his trembling limbs, and he swears he can taste salty waters. Oceans... Stretching out in every direction, deserted by everything but nature. Filled with fish, sunken ships, rocks, strange creature... Unthinkable arts of scenery and long sunken cultures. If he were to think of the best possible place to be for a thing as himself... it would be the ocean.

It could even be enjoyable to a certain extent. He imagines himself lingering on a glittering field of coral reef, the water around him warmed by the southern sun and hundreds of colorful fish swimming around him. Maybe he'd make his home in a sunken ship, like the titanic, or pick a nice home in Atlantis. There might even be a chance of finding an air bubble in one of the sunken ships, or underwater caves with the most magnificent stalactites nature has to offer. Or he could swim to the biggest of rivers, swim upstream and find a lake to occupy! Who knows, he might even become a legend like Nessie! Hah! Loch Tentaspy!

Spy lets out a nervous chuckle at the ridiculous idea, his hands trembling slightly. He remembers, knows where his only way out could be. Right in between the two bases of RED and BLU flows a river where all the sewers come together. A cheap way to keep the sewers clean for the two warring companies, and a perfect way to escape for Spy. The river is blocked by heavy iron bars, but the wall holding them is cracked and battered through years of war and explosions. If there is just one gap large enough for him to squeeze through...

Spy had died in the sewer waters more than once in futile attempts to douse the fire eating away his flesh. Chopped to bits, riddled with bullets, scorched, bludgeoned... Most of it took place in that sad excuse for a river. A few giblets of him probably already explored the river beyond the barred gates.

Spy can't tame his desperate excitement, and he starts making his way towards what he knows is his only possibility of escape. He's so close, so close to freedom! Only a few more minutes of swimming and wringing through the iron bars and then he'll finally be-!

A figure jumps into the water right in front of him, and Spy stares right into the gleaming goggles of his Texan ex-teammate. Spy's hand shoots towards his wrist to activate a non-existent cloak in a reflex, hitting bare skin and giving the Engineer enough time to get a look at the tentacled Spy. The Engineer's wrench slips out of his hands and the man's jaw drops. The pure shock of the Texan and his delayed reaction is what saves Spy from a shotgun clip to the face. Before the man can get the weapon out of his overalls, Spy lashes out, clamping his teeth onto the Engineer's throat and constricting the man with all eight tentacles. The water around the pair grows a faded red in a matter of seconds as Spy rips open the man's throat with panicked jerks. His tentacles are clenched around the Engineer's body, and Spy can feel bones shifting and cracking beneath his grip.

A sudden explosion almost gives him a heart-attack, and he rips himself from the Engineer's corpse, pressing himself against the wall with trembling limbs. Did they shoot at him? Did they see him?

He holds his breath and tries to merge into the wall behind him, anxiously searching for any sign of his discovery. The water above him is wildly disturbed, and big heaps of metal drift by his face. A Sentry, it was just a Sentry being taken down.

Spy throws a hesitant look in the direction of his only possible escape. It'd be downright stupid to go to the river now, plainly insane! The battle is still raging, and the riverbanks are in the middle of the battlefield! He has to hide, wait until it is dark, and then find the way out. Spy lifts his hands to his mouth and sinks his teeth into his fingers with a frustrated groan. A full day he'll have to wait and hope for the Gods to be merciful. There really isn't a reason to worry, he can wait, because he WILL be escaping.

A bomb rolls into the water just a little too close and an explosion ripples through the water, shocking Spy out of his hesitant lingering. He turns to swim to deeper waters, taking the Engineer's corpse with him for extra provisions.

He quickly heads towards the submerged pipe, but when he gets there he is roughly reminded of the monstrous creatures inhabiting the concrete pipe. Their cries make his skin crawl, and they echo far through the dirty waters. He slows to a halt and stares at the pipe from a distance, fidgeting with the tip of one of his tentacles. He doesn't want to go back in there, not with those creatures, please not with those monsters! He doesn't really have a choice. Trying to find a new shelter during the battle would be too dangerous.

He had been hoping to forget the creatures, to find them to be a mirage, or dead at the very least! But their cries continue, no matter how much Spy wishes for them to cease existing.

Spy slowly forces himself forward, clutching to the Engineer's corpse like a lifeline and holding back vomit. As he crawls into the pipe, he is reintroduced to the creatures he gave birth to. It's almost like watching a clutter of aliens. Inside out, cut apart, ugly, screaming, torn, but still moving. Their yellow eyes squeezed close and their mouths pulled open in high-pitched wails. Spy gags at the sight and forces himself to swim inside, lying down as far away as possible from the nest. He is still holding onto the corpse for dear life, digging his claws into it to comfort himself. The screams grow louder in volume and Spy cringes as the sound echoes through the pipe.

"Shut up."

They don't stop crying. If anything, their cries only ring louder in the pipe. Their small limbs reach out to him as they keep on screeching and whining. He has to get rid of them. Throw them out of the water and let them die of dehydration, explosions or stray bullets. They'd be dead before they'd even get to experience the devastating effects of dehydration! They'd just get stepped on, squashed beneath blood-splattered sneakers or steel-toed boots.

He gags at the memory of tiny bones splitting and cracking under the palm of his hand, organs slipping through the gaps in his fingers. The mere idea of crushing is enough for a mouthful of bile to escape his stomach. No. Not that. Not outside of the water. Outside of the pipe would have to do until he can bring himself to touch the revolting things for a second time.

He takes a few deep breaths, and retracts his claws from the Engineer's corpse, readying himself for the migration of the spawns. They're just newborns! Just moving heaps of flesh, they can't do a thing to you! Spy slowly reaches out and grabs one of the creatures with his tentacles. It immediately sinks its tiny claws into the appendage, and Spy lets out a screech in pain and surprise. He swipes his tentacle through the water, but the creature holds on, it's small tentacles joining in its battle for grip.

And a split second later, a mouthful of razor sharp baby teeth are embedded in his flesh. Spy curses at the creature, and he grabs it with his hands, yanking it off his tentacle with a single strong tug. "Augh!" The teeth leave several gashes over his tentacle and he swears at his attacker, whose tentacles and fingers constrict his thumb almost painfully as it licks at the few remains of flesh stuck beneath Spy's nails.

For a moment, Spy considers doing the same what he did last night, crushing the thing between the wall and his hand, but his stomach flips violently, and he abandons the idea immediately. He doesn't want to relive the experience of skin bursting beneath his hand, nor the severe sickness that comes with it ever again.

A sharp bite in his finger snaps Spy out of his thoughts, and with a curse he pulls the creature off his hand with a tentacle, tossing it onto the Engineer's corpse without thought. "It bitme! Cette créature fausse m'a mordu, encore une fois!"

Spy scowls and rubs his thumb over the bite in his finger. He turns his gaze towards the child he threw away, finding it gnawing on the Engineer's blood and water soaked belt with utter determination and hunger. A few of its tentacles are poking through the holes in the belt, and it's claws scratch furiously at the sturdy leather in an attempt to loosen a few bits for consumption.

The sight of the creature trying to eat a dirty belt is almost comical, and Spy snorts humorlessly. "So 'ungry zhat you'd even try to eat a leather belt?" The child doesn't respond and continues its frantic nibbling. The rest of the children continue their wailing, but they are ignored as Spy continues to watch the foraging newborn.

For a one day old child, it is surprisingly effective in tearing and ripping. Weak, yes, but the sharp claws make up for the lack in strength. The thin nails leave surprisingly deep scratches in the belt, and the teeth poke small holes in it without trouble. Spy trembles violently at the idea of those sharp claws once residing within him, and he thanks the Gods for small mercies.

It doesn't take too long before the thing's movements become tired and sluggish, and after a few more minutes, it's grip on the belt falters, causing the creature to tumble off the corpse with a pitiful cry. As it touches the ground it whines softly, its limbs twitching in overexertion and its yellow eyes drooping with exhaustion.

"Giving up so soon?" Spy mumbles more to himself than the creature. "You won't get anywhere with zhat attitude, mon anomalie...You need to keep trying if you want to succeed." The thing keeps on crying weakly, reaching out for the only present source of food in the pipe.

"Oui. Keep moving. Keep going!" It does exactly that, it's tired limbs struggling to climb onto the clothed carcass. "Just a bit more, anomalie... You almost have it." Tiny claws hook into the Engineer's thick overalls, and small teeth follow, hoping in vain to catch flesh instead of tasteless fabric.

It still doesn't give up, tugging and gnawing at the cloth viciously in an attempt to reach the muscle underneath.

Spy leans forward, and digs his claws into the Engineer's corpse, ripping out a solid hunk of meat and tossing it to the creature, bowling the tiny thing over in the progress. Immediately the little monster digs into it with all available limbs and teeth, tearing into the meat with wild fervor and high-pitched little whoops.

Spy tilts his head and distantly watches the child eat. It really is something from an absurd movie, so strange and unreal, yet so close. It's fascinating really, how such a young thing can already smell prey, move around, and consume solid foods without trouble. Children don't develop that fast. Well... at least not normal _human_ ones. He knows next to nothing about octopus spawn behavior and their learning curve, and he doubts he really wants to.

Behind him, the remaining litter of animals keeps screaming, and Spy can almost feel his eardrums ripping. He sighs, and with a small grunt he lobs the Engineer's remains into the wriggling clutter. Within seconds the sewer pipe is completely silent, the creatures swarming over the corpse like ants over a potato chip.

Spy sits at the far end of his 'house', and stares out of the pipe, listening to the sounds of the battle raging above and trying to pass the time. The sooner it becomes night, the sooner he will be gone from this place, well and free. If said escape is even possible...

He digs his nails into his arms and stares past the squirming spawn with an angry snarl. He _will_ escape, there is no if! There will be a hole big enough for him to fit through, and he will be leaving this place and all its terrible things, including the screeching demon spawns! He will have a good and happy life in the sea until he peacefully finds his end during his sleep. Yes. That is how it will end! Like a god damned Hollywood movie!

Ever so slowly, the creatures stop eating, their bright yellow eyes closing and their bodies curling up into little tentacled balls. Spy soon finds himself doing the same, his tentacles curling up beneath him and his head resting on the concrete pipe as comfortably as possible.

His stomach is full, the water is lukewarm and the spawns are finally silent, but a nerve wrecking anxiousness prevents Spy from falling asleep as quickly as the things surrounding him. Only after a good portion of his nails are chewed off does he slip into unconsciousness.

He sleeps without dreams.

…...

**I'm SO uninspired that it's almost HURTFUL! Anyways, here is chapter three! Concrit is greatly appreciated, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter! **


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: This is pretty late I guess, but life has been owning me in the past few weeks. I didn't have the energy to thoroughly beta this chapter myself, so if there are any stupid mistakes, please forgive me. I already got rid of the worst mistakes but there's no telling what I left un-corrected. **

**Anyways, I hope you'll all be able to enjoy this chapter.**

Spy wakes at the Administrator's announcement of temporary ceasefire, and jerks upright with a bad taste lingering in his mouth. The light outside is low, and Spy can hear the two teams retreating to their bases.

He barely has the strength to keep himself from immediately rushing towards the river, his heartbeat loud in his ears and a headache clouding him. The few minutes he has to wait for all the RED's and BLU's to go to base seem to take ages, and he speeds out of the pipe as soon as the last voice fades into the distance.

He swims through the darkening waters as fast as he can, his throat constricted and his heart pounding in his ears. A strong current pushes against him, the tingling fresh water like a breath of fresh air to his altered lungs and gills, but he barely notices it through the pounding headache and aching stress. He forces himself to go faster, his stomach lurching and his breath shaky. The enormously high walls surrounding the battlefield only show two openings; the gates allowing the river to flow through, blocked off by thick steel bars. Only a mere two chances of escape. It doesn't take long before they come into sight, and Spy immediately scans the bars for damage or weaknesses before he even reaches them.

The reinforced concrete wraps snugly around the thick bars, almost melting together with the unmoving iron. Hundreds of burned marks litter its surface, showing just how much force the wall can take in one shot. Stickybombs, bullets and arrows were shot into the wall more often than not, and yet no more than a few cracks. Undoubtedly another secret technique belonging only to the RED and BLU companies, just like the Medigun fumes or those self-building appliances.

He runs his tentacles and pained hands over the place where the bars and concrete come together, futilely scratching and pulling at the few cracks running through the solid wall. No matter what he tries, the bars stay in place. One chance left.

He swirls himself around and starts making his way to the other side. He barely dares to keep his eyes open as the dirty water still clouds his vision of the barred gate. The stream pushes him on, and the gate looms from the waters.

The cracked gap is like a scar on the large wall, an imperfection that makes truly perfect. Spy can taste bile rising up in his throat as he nears his last means of escape.

He almost throws himself at the solid concrete, scrabbling at the hard stone and staring at the hole in the wall. It's too small. It's plain to see at the first glance. Barely large enough for his head, let alone his shoulders. No... No it's not too small. It has to be large enough! It HAS to be!

He pushes his head into the gap, his shoulders bumping against the wall no matter how much he struggles. The stone scrapes his face cruelly, ripping away the last remaining scraps of his mask, breaking his skin as he pulls himself back from his no-longer-a-chance at freedom. He doesn't fit.

Spy's breathing takes on a manic edge, a high-pitched wheeze adding to his labored breaths as he tries to re-ensure himself. There are still other ways, there have to be! There must be more holes than just this one, more ways to escape!

"This is not happening...This is NOT happening!" He claws at the concrete, leaving nothing more than a few brief bloody stripes on the wall. His nails chip and crumble as he continues to scratch furiously at the unrelenting wall. Only when his hands have started to tremble uncontrollably through the pain does he stop, his arms gone completely weak.

Against all knowledge, he tries again, ripping the skin on his head open in his attempts to force himself through the gap. His shoulders bump painfully against the jagged edges of the hole in the wall, and for the first time Spy finds himself hating the fact that the Medic left his upper half human. He could have squeezed through, had his body been completely boneless and slimy, he could have been outside right now! Heading towards the ocean! Heading towards his freedom!

He wails, futilely running his pained fingers over the concrete. He starts punching at the wall when his fingers can't take anymore punishment, desperately willing it to crumble under the force of his knuckles.

When he can't summon any strength to pull at the stone anymore, he lets himself sink to the bottom of the river, the current lazily rolling over him. For the first time in his life, he allows himself to despair. There is no solution to the puzzle this time. He won't be making it out here. He'll die in the filthy sewers, hiding in the excrement of his former teammates, scavenging their dead flesh like a vulture, a nest of deformed monsters the only things to keep him company.

He has nothing. A sob wrecks through his body like a shock wave, and Spy curls up in himself, pressing his face into the rocky sand beneath him.

Just a few weeks ago, Spy would rather have undergone torture than seeing himself giving up, but his last desperate chance at freedom being denied so abruptly finally made his iron spine snap under the pressure.

He sinks his teeth into his torn fingertips, his breathing feeling heavy and erratic. What is left? What is left? He has to find something, anything, to live for! To strive towards! He has always found something before, like living through torture just to be able to taste his favorite wine again, or taking those last agonizing steps so he can pass out on a soft bed instead of a cold floor...

What does he have to go on for now?

He clenches his jaws shut and balls his fists, forcing himself to get up from the muddy riverbed. Rule one of desperation, panic, and depression: don't allow yourself to think. Distract yourself, and don't think, don't think!

Spy hurries through the sewers towards the submerged sewer pipe, startling awake the clutter of spawns as he scrambles into the den and onto the nest with a heaving sound. The creatures squeak in fear, and start wailing loudly.

With a wail of his own, Spy pulls the countless writing bodies against him in a sloppy hug. Their tentacles feel awkward, slimy and cold against his skin, but Spy can't really find it in himself to care anymore. His future doesn't matter anymore, nor does dignity or appearances. He sobs, but the sound is overpowered by the crying spawns.

The things wriggle desperately in his grip, a countless number of small nails raking over his skin, their cries echoing through the pipe until they become static in Spy's ears. He cries along with them, wailing and sobbing without holding back. It's not like it matters anymore. He's already dead, dead and doomed. A weak twist at the end of a terrible movie. When the creatures have stopped bawling, Spy is still sobbing.

By the time they start falling asleep, Spy has become quiet, staring blankly at the wall in front of him. Some of them are still awake, making weird yips at Spy and crawling over his limbs. One of them nips daringly at Spy's bleeding fingers, and he jerks his gaze away from the wall with a short hiss. He doesn't have the energy to do more than look at the child, and it bravely continues nipping at Spy's bleeding fingertips.

Spy apathetically pushes the child away, watching it take a slow tumble down his arm. "Leave me alone." The spawn looks up at him with its impossibly yellow eyes and then starts climbing onto Spy's arm, once again heading for the wounded fingers. Spy watches distantly as the child slowly but surely creeps its way up his arm. "...Not giving up are you?" He grabs the small creature and pulls it off his arm, the thing's tiny nails leaving red scrapes over his skin. Spy lifts the creature to his face and hesitantly runs his damaged fingertips over the small body.

Its skin feels raw and slimy to his damaged fingertips, and the creature squirms a bit under his touch, trying to bite into Spy's fingers yet again with a small squeal.

"I don't zhink I can go on anymore..."

It doesn't answer him, and instead lets out a big yawn, the eight tiny tentacles uncurling from Spy's hand and wrapping themselves up. It's almost cute when the thing rolls on its side and starts falling asleep, its tiny fists clenching and unclenching as it stretches and yawns.

Spy carefully closes both of his hands around the creature. The small tentacles poke out from between his fingers, and wander aimlessly over his skin instead of their usual frantic clutching. In the palm of his hand, Spy can feel the tiny torso move up and down with watery-breaths, jittery heartbeats like soft ticks against his hand. Water flows past Spy's hand as the spawn exhales. If he concentrates hard enough, he can feel the tiniest of ribs pressing against his fingers with every intake of the child's breath.

He shivers as he feels the rest of the small breathing bodies held in his eight tentacles. It's almost an overload of information, small hands resting on his skin, mouths nipping unconsciously at the tips of his tentacles, dozens of heartbeats beating under his grip.

It's unlike anything Spy ever encountered before. It's not by far the first time he held lives in his hands, but it is the first time that it really means something to him. When pressing a knife sharply against someone's throat, do you really feel their life? Do you feel every unconscious movement? You hold a life in your hands, but only figuratively speaking. Closing your hands around a living creature, feeling its entire existence within your grasp and knowing you have the power to end it in a moment, but not the will to do so.

"Trusting me is a terrible mistake to make..." The children sleep on. Spy snorts humorlessly and rests the back of his head against the pipe, focusing his attention on the spawn sleeping in his hands. His fingers tremble slightly, and he tightens his grip around the child in his hands. No thinking. No thinking!

He lowers the creature in his hand to the ground and rolls it onto the floor. That's number one.

He grabs another one and lies it with the first one, continuing to count the children. It doesn't take long before one wakes when he grabs it, and it whines, the yellow eyes squinting up at him accusingly. Had this happened a few hours ago, it probably would have annoyed him. It could wake the others and it was slowing him down as he tried to count them, but right now, he is only thankful for the delay in his task. It means there is less time to sink into depression, and more for keeping the creatures asleep and silent.

"Quiet with you! Or you might wake the others." He tries to scold the child, but his words lack in strength. He almost wants them to wake up and scream at him, forcing him to spend the night trying to calm them down and passing out in exhaustion. He needs something, ANYTHING to distract him! Even if that something would be hitting them and hitting them and hitting them until he felt better!

The child doesn't scream, and the rest of the litter lies undisturbed. The whiny whimpers turn into silence, and the creature is asleep once again, snuggling up to the palm of Spy's hand.

Spy holds on to it for a few more moments, superficially examining the child resting in his hands before laying it down by its brethren and continuing his counting. He has to finish counting them, and then he has to recount them until they wake up, or he will undoubtedly go insane.

As he slowly counts the creatures, he takes every opportunity to procrastinate, inspecting them from top to bottom and trying to see differences in their appearance. One of them has an undergrown tentacle, number six if he wasn't mistaken, and number four's skin is just a tiny tad lighter than its brethren. He hadn't checked for gender, and he didn't want to. That, and he has no idea what the gender differences in octopuses are.

He slowly places number eight onto the 'counted' pile, and reaches out to the remaining children without much thought.

Number nine is the most quiet and still one so far, sleeping the deepest of all and barely stirring at all as Spy lifts it from the heap by his pained fingertips. As Spy turns it over in his hands, he understands why it is so unnaturally quiet. It's dead.

He yanks his hands off the creature as if it were on fire, pressing his back to the concrete pipe behind him in shock. The dead child drifts downwards in the water and lands in a heap on the ground. It looks sad. It's skin is the same blue as the others, but glazed over by a dim grey slime, the tentacles messily twisted, its body is curled in a vague fetal position, and two swollen eyelids stuck together with grime.

Still born.

When. When, during those terrible hours, had he given birth to a _corpse_! Spy feels bile rising from his stomach as he imagines the dead creature slowly sliding towards the exit, its corpse slipping out the unnatural opening. Dead, dead, he had given birth to a dead dead dead thing! A dead thing!

He retches into the water, and half-digested chunks of flesh float in the water around him.

Gagging, he throws the dead thing out of the pipe, unable to pull the image of a dead corpse slipping out of him out of his mind. With a bit of waving he ushers the drifting vomit out of the pipe, purposely not looking outside of the pipe. After the last few pieces of bile drift out of the pipe, he yanks one of the sleeping creatures from the uncounted pile and it awakens with a frightened squeak, that is immediately silenced as Spy almost crushes the child in his grip. He barely notices the small tentacles and hands tugging desperately at his fingers, and only when the child lets out the last of its breath in a long wheeze does he loosen his deathly grip on the child. It doesn't scream, it only breathes raggedly, sucking in as much water as possible and trembling in Spy's still-tight grip.

Spy holds the panicked child close to him as it blubbers pathetically between rasping breaths. Number nine, this is number nine, not that one outside, not that cold one! This is number nine, this living one! He should be thinking about this creature, not that... that dead thing!

It stays in his hands for a long time, but it does not stop whimpering. Bruises from Spy's clenching grip are blooming all over its torso, and it winces with every breath. It takes a long time for it to fall asleep, and even in its dreams, its breaths are shaky and shallow. He lies it down by the counted ones and slumps against the wall behind him.

Spy runs a hand over his face and takes a few deep breaths. "Pulling through, one by one, you're pulling through..."

He looks over the clutch of uncounted sleeping children, and carefully rolls them aside. Four more child corpses lie in the waste of their living siblings, the sight making his stomach churn for the umpteenth time. He gags again, ripping his gaze away from the disgusting sight. He forces himself to grab the unmoving things so he can throw them outside the pipe. They feel even more disgusting than the living children... He can just about see four shadowy forms drift down to the bottom of the sewers before he shakily returns to the counting of his _living _spawn. This time making sure not to crush the creatures as he counts them.

...twenty-four...

...twenty-five...

...and twenty-six.

Twenty-six children, not counting the dead ones. Spy chews on the inside of his cheek as he lightly runs his nails over the last child lying silently in his hands. That inbred son of a dachshund had impregnated him with thirty-two monstrous things! With a growl, he drops the child onto the pile with the others and curls up to a ball.

His anger fades quickly, and it doesn't take long for his melancholy to take over again, dark thoughts once again slipping into his mind. Spy's tentacles curl themselves up at where his... 'birthing canal' now is, and he swears he can feel something moving inside him again. He shudders involuntary and rests his head against the concrete with a long-stretched moan of panic. It's only mental, that wriggling feeling inside him. He knows with his head that it isn't there, that there simply _couldn't _be more of them, but it doesn't take away the trembling fear that rushes through him at the phantom pains.

He brings his wounded fingers to his mouth again and slowly chews and pulls on the flesh until he can no longer feel anything else, real or not. He finds sleep at the idea of the Medic undergoing the same pains.

…...

**Criticism and reviews are greatly appreciated! **


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Yes yes, I am aware that this probably took WAYYYY to long to update, but quality is better than quantity. I had already written this chapter several months ago, but when I was about to post it I found mistakes and terrible lines everywhere. Polishing it took longer than I expected, but here it is at last. Chapter 5.**

**Remember: Giving me concrit is like giving me cookies! (And I love cookies!) Please enjoy!**

Spy is awakened by the sound of battle, the children still asleep besides him. Spy almost faints as a terrible headache kicks in when he raises his head, his vision going black for a split second. A moment later his vision returns, a pounding headache following it. It reminds him of respawn. Knowing your eyes are open, yet seeing nothing until you wake up in a cold room with an aching headache. Too bad this one won't be dissipating withing a few moments... He lets out a long and pained groan as he rubs his hands over his temples to try and soothe the pain, already knowing it to be futile.

The light streaming in from the outside is painful to his eyes, though the shadows are long in the water, signaling the end of the day coming closer. He slowly sits upright, feeling more drained and tired than ever before, and a moment later he remembers why. It'd been some time since he'd had a meal without puking it back up half an hour later, and it was finally getting back at him. When was the last time he held a meal down?

Spy groans. He doesn't want to eat. If anything the very idea makes him feel even more sick. Eating had never been one of his favorite things to do in his free time. Expensive dinners and small portions of delight were nice, sure, but eating had always come third/fourth place on Spy's priority list. He'd probably skipped more dinners and breakfasts than the rest of the BLU team combined.

The world spins around him so slowly that it barely seems to be moving at all, and the edges of his vision shift from sharp to blurry every few minutes. Why should he even try to eat something anyway? There is nothing to live for now. No ways of escape, no ways of becoming human again, even revenge isn't an option. All he can do is die by this point. Whether that be after years or days, all he'll be doing here in the future will be dying, dying and dying.

Spy lets out a cracked moan and slowly curls up into a ball, pressing a fist against his mouth and biting in his knuckles and fingers. Living or dying, what difference would it make? Even if he decides to live on in the filth of his former teammates and live off their corpses, in the end he'd die. Maybe he could capture the Medic once, try to torture him until he uses the suicide capsule to end up back in respawn... But what would that accomplish? Why should he go on? So he could get caught again and face more experiments? No. He'd rather commit suicide.

He'd never truly understood why people would want to kill themselves. In some cases, he had seen the practical side of it, kamikaze attacks or keeping information hidden... But to simply give up under the pressure and stop trying, ending yourself in a worthless or even hindering way! Ridiculous, stupid, idiotic! Why slice your wrists when you can go on a last trip to a suicide mission that will benefit so many?

But now he gets it. Why people decide to go so uselessly. How can you die usefully if there is no possible way for you to be useful? Keeping the machine running when all that comes out is broken and all that goes in is wasted? Why keep on living a life not worth the effort?

It's unreal, considering to do the thing he'd least expected himself to do at any moment in his life. Even though the idea had crossed him in moments of morbid curiosity, and idle thoughts about death, suicide had never even been considered as an option.

Spy grits his teeth, his hands shaking violently as his teeth clamp down even harsher on his tortured fingers. He'd never go that low. He was, no, he IS a man of pride! That Medic might have stolen everything from him, but not his personality. Not those strict rules on which he built his entire life!

He knows though, that determination and past rules aren't enough. If this hopeless idling goes on much longer promises from the man he used to be will do nothing to stop him from killing himself. He needs something to do, something to depend on...!

He squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a shuddering breath around his tormented fingers. Keeping himself busy wouldn't cut it, there are only so many things he could do down here without being captured, and even then, what use would those actions serve?

His eyes droop. There had always been a way out before, even in the most helpless of situations. An accomplice in the same building, a guard tying a knot too loose, a forgotten hairpin hidden in his hair, always a way to break free so he could finish his mission. In this case all the hairpins in the world couldn't get him out of this cage.

His gaze is pulled to the pile creatures still sleeping besides him, and he chokes back a pained sob. Has he really lost so much? So much that these disgusting creatures are all that he has left?

There is no need to try and think of something else. What thing in this place could possibly be a motivator besides the clutch of malformed children demanding attention and food? With a wince Spy pulls his fingers from his mouth and carefully runs his hand over a few of the spawns.

It still makes him shudder slightly, and he quickly pulls his hand away.

"Just... just until I find something else to live for..."

The temptation to keep lying and breathing is great, and Spy gives in, closing his eyes and willing his headache away. It wouldn't do any good to go out for food right now. He's slow, in pain, and a target for everyone on the battlefield. It won't be long before ceasefire is called...

Ceasefire seems to be called only a second later, but when Spy opens his eyes again, the sunlight has almost gone. The sewer floor is still littered with bodies and limbs, thankfully some of them lying very close to the pipe. Spy doubts he can even make it to the other side of the sewers in this state. The world is slowly spinning before his eyes, and even though he had slept far more than ever before in his life, his eyes just won't stop sliding closed.

With a heavy groan he slowly, very slowly, moves himself towards the nearest hunk of meat. He feels nauseas as he eats, but he can almost feel himself become alive again. His head still hurts, and he still can't move without the world spinning, but he feels just a little bit better. He should have tried harder to keep his food down. If he were to die, he'd prefer to die of something other than starvation... With a sigh, he drags a few pieces over to the pipe for the children to eat.

As he comes into the pipe, a few of them are already waking up, stretching out their tiny appendages and yawning. As soon as they see, or smell, the meat, all tranquility is gone, the spawns all clambering and chirping their way towards the Spy.

He tosses the meat at them before they touch him, not feeling much for having a writhing mass of limbs descending upon him. Spy looks away as they eat this time, nausea rolling through him at the disgusting sounds of the spawns eating.

Without noticing it, his fingers find their way to his mouth again, and he chokes on his breath when one of his claws cracks into pieces. "Aahgggg! Merde!" His fingers look terrible, barely an inch of unmarred skin visible in between cuts and scrapes. The flesh looks somewhat swollen, no doubt because of the water it soaked up in the days he had spent in submersion, and an ominous green tint starting to form at the older wounds.

Spy suppresses a shudder at the sight of his mangled fingers, and quickly averts his gaze. "I didn't think they were that bad..." He'll have to go out and find a medpack before he completely chews his fingers off. "Zhis is what happens when I can't smoke..."

He'd always been big on bad habits. Smoking, alcohol, sex, stealing... How is a man to enjoy life without sin? If only cigarettes burned underwater... Mauled fingers brush his lips again and he hastily pulls them away, instead settling for playing around with a few of his tentacles and murmuring to himself.

He could go out now. Ceasefire is already called... A few of the spawns climb over his back, swatting at his tentacles and chirping quietly. Spy chews on the inside of his cheek nervously, listening carefully for any sound besides the children playing around him. Nothing. With a growl he shakes the children off him, and starts swimming towards the nearest medpack.

It feels good to be outside of the pipe. The dirty sewer water almost refreshing in taste compared to the disgusting waters lying stale within the pipe. A small squeak sounds behind him as he swims, and when he takes a look over his shoulder, he finds five of the spawns still attempting to follow him. They swim awkwardly, but they swim, and pretty fast too considering their extremely young age.

He sighs tiredly at the slow flailing of the things, and continues on his way. What would it matter if the things swim with him? It's not like any of the mercenaries ever come out at this hour. Only a drunk Demo would sometimes waddle outside to pass out in some impossible places, but those same Demo's told of 'Nessie' and some old haunted bomb-book called the- ' bomb nomni kon' or something crazy like that. And even if then man DID see them, who knows what that drunkard might say about the sighting?

"TWENTY feet tall lads! Twenty I tell yeh! I mightn't- mightn't hav' escaped if it hadn' been fer my scottish reflexes and me trusty scrumpy! Hundred's of 'em swarmin' in teh sewers, HUNDREDS me lads!"

Spy finds a small smile pulling at his lips, remembering the hundreds of far-fetched stories told to them by their Demo. He'd probably make a one hell of a story teller if he was less drunk and a bit more coherent. In any case, the spawns coming wouldn't be a problem. He's too tired to send them back anyway...

He swims slowly, sometimes looking over his back to watch the children flounder through the water in their best efforts to grab onto one of Spy's tentacles. Above the water, all is quiet, and a moon shimmers down on the strange group. Spy surfaces for the first time in days, and revels in the old sensation of taking a deep breath of fresh air.

The children surface besides him, half choking on their first intake of oxygen, and gasping dramatically at their new discovery. Spy ignores them, slowly swimming through the water and finding a strange enjoyment in using his arms to swim instead of his tentacles. He almost feels...human.

He stops swimming abruptly, and his good mood is gone immediately. He lets himself sink under the surface again, and he plucks one of the children from its playing, giving it a blank and almost bitter stare. "Remind me. Remind me why I am still doing all of this!" The child shies away from Spy's hissing tone, and hides its face in Spy's hand with a scared whimper.

It isn't an answer, no matter how much Spy wish it would be, and he lets go of the child with a frustrated growl, swimming to the edge of the sewer. Sand pricks painfully in his elbows as he pulls himself onto the dry land, and Spy curses as the sand finds its way into the open wounds on his fingers.

It's harder than he expected, moving on land. His tentacles seem to weight tons, and the muscles in his arms tremble as he uses them to crawl towards the med-pack. The young floating in the water make distressed chirps, obviously confused and scared as to where Spy went. Spy ignores them and continues his heavy crawl forwards. His tentacles chafe on the rough, dry ground, and his vision is littered with small black spots, but he forces himself on. When he finally reaches his goal, he lets himself collapse besides it, catching his breath with dry wheezes.

Had it always felt this terrible to be out of the water? With a pained grunt, he sluggishly scoops up the kit and starts the long way back to the water, throwing a tired whisper at the wildly chirping creatures flailing in the water. "Shut up, shut up! I'll be right zhere!" He barely makes it a few feet before a single splashing footstep and an oh so recognizable voice make his heart jump into his throat. It's the doctor. That dove-loving mental-ward escapee that BLU decided to hire as their Medical expert. The BLU Medic.

He scrambles to the half-hidden corner in blind panic, pressing himself in between the barrel and the wall as tightly as possible as his head spins in nausea. He clutches the medpack like a lifeline, straining to keep himself quiet. The night is deathly silent save for the children chirping from within the water, and Spy almost believes it was just his imagination, but then a barely audible whisper breaks through the still night.

"Mein Gott! Zhey live!"

The chirps coming from the water immediately grow quieter, startled and confused in tone. There's a sudden splash and within moments the small sounds become panicked shrieks. Spy shrinks behind the barrel and holds his breath, his fingers once again traveling to his mouth in an unstoppable habit. The doctor is barely audible over the panicked cries of the children, but Spy can just barely make out the man's words as he mutters to the children. "Look at you, so much more effective than I expected! I thought zhem all dead by now! Vell, I guess this means your father died during zhe birthing process. I highly doubt he would have let any of you live. "

Spy shakily peeks through the small gap between the barrel and the wall, unable to ignore his old Spy instincts to see as much as you can. His stomach starts aching as he spots the rubber-boots dressed Medic kneel at the water, untangling the struggling spawns from a thick net and lowering them into a water-filled bucket standing next to him.

It's pitiful to see the panicking spawns constricting themselves further and further in the fishnet that the Medic threw onto them, but Spy doesn't move a muscle to save them. He's not insane. A fight like this he'd lose in a second, and even if he did win, the Medic would be back in a well counted 15 seconds to pump him full of anesthetics.

With a 'plunk' the last child is dropped into the bucket, and the Medic pushes the children to the bottom of the bucket so he can lower a makeshift lid over it. "Oh, I really do hope you are not the only ones to survived!" It doesn't take long for the Medic to continue on his way, lugging the bucket and net with him. "Pst pst pst... Little things! Come out come out wherever you are! I have food for you~!"

Spy waits until the excited man's crooning voice disappears in the distance, and then he waits until he can once again hear his thoughts over his frantically beating heart. With shaking hands he rummages through the med-kit, not daring to leave his hiding spot just yet, and needing something to do besides cowering in a corner. He fumbles with the healing salve and the gauge, his hands shaking as he tries to apply the healing ointment onto his agonized fingers. The ache dulls as the salve works its magic, but Spy already has his fingers at his lips again, biting at the regrowing nails and skin in pure anxiousness.

An hour passes, but even after the agonizingly long and silent minutes, Spy still doesn't dare to crawl towards the water. Any moment, that man can round the corner, coming back from his night of spawn hunting and pump him full of syringes. Drag him over the ground to strap him to that cold surgery table and stick some more dubious drugs into his system, or another appendage on his body...

He would rather chew through his wrists than ever being touched by that man's hands ever again.

His fingers are bleeding again, and the skin on his tentacles is painfully dry as they writhe over the rough ground in anxiousness. Any trace of reason tell him to leave his hiding spot. It's nothing but his fear that holds him in place, preventing him from leaving his 'safe' hiding spot. He can't stay there forever, squeezed in between a barrel and a wall with a medpack between his tentacles.

He digs his teeth deep into his fingers, as a way of steeling himself, wishing he had a cigarette instead. He holds in his breath, and then crawls from behind the barrel, digging his half-healed fingers into the dirty ground as he claws his way towards the water with the medpack still clutched in his tentacle's grip. A footstep sounds, and against all logic he stops dead in his tracks, breath held in and heart pounding in his ears. Nothing. The silence in the air is deafening, so quiet that it rings like static in his ears. The silence you hear after an enormous explosion. He should be hearing something, anything, besides the frantic beating of his heart. He feels like he's gone deaf.

With a sudden last panicked 'jump' he splashes into the sewer, the sound of water rushing past his ears as loud as a bomb going off besides him. He immediately speeds away, almost knocking himself out when he bashes his head against a protruding rock in the progress. His head spins and his vision is spotted with dark flecks as he blindly speeds on, not taking the time to recover from the blow to his head.

He dives into the pipe like a frightened child would dive into bed, immediately swimming to the very back and curling up with a sob of still-lasting panic.

The remaining spawns in the pipe immediately start chirping in fear at their father's panicked demeanor, clawing their way towards the Spy as fast as they can and hiding between his tentacles. Twenty-one of them are left now. The ones taken by the Medic are lost. He is not going to risk the few things he has left just to save those things. The ones in his hold are still with him, not all is lost...

He curls his tentacles around the crying children and huddles them close.

-

**Any thoughts at all? Share 'em. Cuz sharin' is carin'!**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: ... I forgot to upload this once I finished it. Sounds stupid, yes, but that is what happened! Anyway, I finally remembered to upload this! I hope you will be able to enjoy this! Have fun!**

Chapter 6

"It's alright, everything is alright." He hugs them close to him and keeps talking to the creatures in his hold. The children's crying slowly fades into sniffles and whines as he continues to speak, and they curl up against Spy. He can feel them relax in his grip and nuzzle against his skin. So trusting... Spy lies his thumb onto the throat of one of the children, and curls his fingers around the back of its neck.

Not a single sane creature would let Spy's place his hand on their throat like that, yet the child only seems to enjoy the contact, curling its tentacles around Spy's hands and pressing it's chin into the thumb lying on its throat with a small giggly sound. So stupid. Spy wouldn't even need to choke the child to kill it, just a bit of force would snap its neck in an instant! Spy softly strokes the spawn over its head, and receives an affectionate but painful bite at his fingers for his trouble. He flinches at the pain and pulls back his hand quickly, the child tumbling backwards through the water slowly at the sudden motion.

It whimpers pathetically and waves its arms through the water, slowly drifting to the bottom of the pipe. "Mon dieu! First you bite me and then you want me to come pick you up? Swim over here yourself." The child keeps on whimpering, its attempt of swimming looking more like drowning underwater. Apparently the ones that had been following Spy on his trip out earlier had been quite talented swimmers... Spy's mood goes cold at the thought of the encounter with the Medic, and he quickly shakes it out of his head. Don't think about that. Don't think about that!

Maybe, teaching the things how to swim would be a good idea. At the very least, he'd be occupied with something else besides being sick, and terrified, and confused, and angry, and... Yes. Teaching the m to swim is definitely the better idea. "Well, better zhan nothing..." Spy sighs, and starts peeling the children off him, gaining a few scrapes where their claws had refused to let go of his skin. With his tentacles, he pushes them to the far back of the pipe, and then floats in the water about a meter in front of them. This should work well enough. At least, it had been how his parents had taught him to swim...

The litter chirps whiningly at him, and reach out with their small limbs. "What is it? Can't get over here with your itty bitty baby muscles?" He mocks. After a moment of pleading looks, the children start making their way towards the Spy, pulling themselves along the ground with their claws. "Non, non! You must SWIM, not crawl! Mon dieu, do I have to help you with everyzhing?" He sweeps his tentacles through the water, the flow of the water pulling the spawns off the ground and close to the ceiling of the pipe, spinning slowly and chirping in disorientation.

It doesn't take long for the scrambled spawns to find an upright position. It was almost something he could be proud of, seeing them find their upright positions with a few awkward squirms. "Zhere. Zhat is better. Now swim towards me, s'il vous plait..." Spy doubts they understand him, but they come nonetheless, flailing with both arms and tentacles alike and slowly coming his way.

It only takes minutes before they manage to stay upright, and gain some speed. It's astounding how quickly they learn, no doubt thanks to the medic's meddling with their DNA... Spy shivers involuntary and brings back his attention to the swimming children.

A rather pale child has the lead leading, already stretching its small arms to grab a hold of the Spy. Spy can't hold back a small smile as he pulls back just as the child is about to reach him. "How long are you planning to make me wait? Come come!" It feels good to be a little mean again. He keeps his tentacles just out of reach, taking joy in the frustrated faces of the spawns trying to grab them. He grins, and bypasses the children swiftly, the flow of his movements once again dragging them into a spin.

He turns around and spreads his arms as if to welcome them. "What is wrong? Too slow to catch me even if I swim right past you?" He snickers as the spawns continue their chase, their little teeth bared in concentration and their arms stretched out to catch him.

As the creatures continue to swim after him with undwindling determination, Spy finds himself having fun. He feels more like himself again, more like the Spy he always used to be. Slipping through the fingers of his persecutors again and again, and showing up again to tease them just as they were to give up on their chase.

"What, can't reach me?" He can't help teasing them as they fail to catch him, and the grin on his face stretches wider and wider. "Here, I'll even close my eyes, to give you a sporting chance of actually coming close to me!" There is no way the things will understand his words, but Spy doesn't let his reasoning spoil the fun. Not like those featherbrained RED's ever understood his insults when he teased them, so really, nothing changed.

A sudden blow to the back of his head ends his teasing fun immediately and he almost chokes on his breath. Panicked he spin around, coming face to face with a wall. Not the Medic, just a wall. A normal, harmless wall. Before he gets the time to utter his relief, a dozen of tiny sharp claws hook into the skin on his back, and he cries out in pain while the spawns cry out in joy and triumph as they finally reach their target.

With a panicked and angry hiss, Spy yanks the attackers from his back, and throws them wildly through the water with his tentacles. He presses his back to the wall in panic, breath irregular and heart pounding. When did he leave the pipe? The spawns cry out in panic as they spin through the water and roll over the sewer floor.

Spy floats absolutely still in the water, fingers aching and his tentacles clenched into tight balls beneath him. All that moves are the frightened spawns, and the few pieces of garbage lying in the water. The surface is calm, and nothing indicates the presence of someone besides Spy and the creatures around him. He starts when one of the children grabs a hold of his tentacle, giving him a wide-eyes and terrified look. He doesn't dare comfort it, and instead curls his tentacle around the child and squeezes lightly to comfort both himself and the shivering infant in his grip.

One by one the spawns join him by the wall, clutching onto him and looking around with fearful eyes. Nothing happens. No flashlight shines through the water, no nets float down, nothing. Spy finally dares to breathe again, and he starts moving back to the pipe as fast as he dares, following the darkness of the shadows with great care.

Once his fingers feel the safe concrete of the pipe, he claws his way inside as quickly as possible. He leans against the cold concrete, and a shivering sigh slips past his lips. He draws his hands over his face, and closes his eyes in an attempt to relax. "It was nothing...Don't... don't worry..." His whisper is hoarse and his throat feels constricted. "I think It's safer to postpone those swimming lessons for now..."

He has barely finished his last sentence when the children regain their voices, and start crying softly. It's a different crying than before, and somehow the creatures manage to sound even more pitiful than before. He shushes them as quietly as he can, and he squeezes them lightly to try and calm them down. It doesn't take long before they stop crying, and instead settle for curling into Spy's grip and slipping into sleep.

Spy sighs, and lets himself fall to the side, taking great care in keeping the spawns asleep. His hand brushes something luke-warm lying the water, and a few tiny tentacles wrap weakly around Spy's fingers. Spy almost chokes on his breath at the unexpected contact, and he yanks his hand away. Didn't he have all the children hidden in his tentacles? A pained and tired crying tells a different story.

He reaches out carefully, and again a few tentacles wrap loosely around his fingers. Ah. It is the one spawn that he had almost crushed in his distress a day or so earlier. A days... Had he really left the wounded child for an entire day? It's skin is spotted in ugly brown markings, probably the octopus-human hybrid version of a severe bruise, and the eyes are half shut and covered in grime. It's a pitiful sight.

Carefully, Spy places his hand behind the child, and as gently as he can he nudges the battered creature onto his open palm.

The child wheezes and moans in pain, but it does not move. Spy can only guess what important organs and bones he broke inside the tiny creature when he squeezed it. The Medpack still lies within the pipe, and Spy reels the thing in, pulling out the remainder of healing ointment in a streak of guilt. Trying to get it onto the wounded baby without hurting it is practically impossible underwater, but he tries anyway, wiping a generous amount of the healing salve onto the biggest bruise on the creature.

It's mouth and eyes open in a scream, but before a sound can come out, the pained expression turns to one of relief. Spy can see the bruises fade into a green-yellow color that looks wrong on the rest of its blue tinted skin. The spawn seems to faint in his very hands, going completely slack in a matter of seconds. If it hadn't been for the small movement of its gills, Spy would have thought it to be dead.

He holds the child in his hands, and lies down to so he can sleep. It's harder than ever to slip into high light sleep, the sleeping creatures nestling in his tentacles like a constant reminder of reality.

At the end of the night he is worn out. His head feels fuzzy, and the early sun seems unusually bright. He uncurls his tentacles and places the spawns close to each other in a heap, before stretching all his limbs as far as he can in the confines of his makeshift home. It's calm outside, and Spy slowly lets himself drift out of the pipe, aching for tranquility. He can hear doves coo in the distance, and a shudder runs over his back at the all too recognizable sound.

It's the time when Medic feeds his revolting collection of flying rats, cooing over the filthy creatures like they were his own children. Spy had never been a fan of squab, but after enduring countless hours strapped to a surgery table with those things pecking and squawking at his wounds, he'd taken a strange pleasure in the idea of the feathered vermin lying cooked and sliced on a dinner plate. Maybe it also had something to do with Medic's 'alterations' to his mind, at this point it barely matters.

Though the sound is one that makes his skin crawl, knowing the Medic is with his doves means a moment of relative peace and solitude. Spy slowly swims to the surface of the water, hesitant but eager to experience the early morning. The BLU Medic is at his base, and so is the RED one. Those men never lets anyone else feed their disgusting pigeons, for reasons Spy cannot even begin fathom. The air is warm and windless, the sky a clear blue in promise of flawless hot weather. Feeling tense still, Spy nervously lays back, letting his tentacles just barely touch the surface of the water. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had the privilege of an early morning walk. Ever since that Medic had imprisoned him, he'd only seen sunlight through dusty and stained windows.

With a long sigh, he closes his eyes, hanging in between sleep and consciousness in soft streaming water and sunlight. The breezeless air on his tentacles is calming, the sound of the doves muffled by the water standing just barely above his ears and the muscles in his body finally relaxing. It's the perfect moment.

He knows it will only be a few more minutes before the Administrator announces today's battle, destroying this delectable moment, but it does not matter. This is a moment of enjoyment and peace, finally interrupting the eight-legged nightmare that had befallen him... Still, any moment that witchy voice would boom over the field, rouse him from his peaceful sleep and send him speeding back into that dark sewer pipe in fear of being caught... Any moment now... Any moment...

"Ceasefire will continue to stand today until further notice! Both RED and BLU are given time to prepare for tomorrows relocation!"

Spy jerks upright, an all new sort mixed fear and excitement balling up in his throat as the meaning of the Administrator's words sinks in. Relocation is not what he had been expecting. Not at all! His guts tingle uncomfortably, and Spy dives underwater trying to clear his head in the water. Relocation. This never happened before! Or at the very least never at this scale! It was always just one person at a time, to be replaced with some other mercenary in the matter of a day... Curiosity and fear tug at his stomach, and Spy fiddles nervously with a tentacle, fingers aching and jaw clenched. What could possibly induce such a rare event? Was the war here finished?...

And what does it mean for him? A shudder runs through him. Would there be no more replacement teams? No more food? Would the administrator erase her old playfield from the map with a well-aimed bomb? Had the Medic tattled about his inhuman experiments? Is Spy in for a new scientific adventure by the hands of that witch of an Administrator?

He swims back to the pipe, lingering nervously at the entrance, his teeth finding his fingers despite his best efforts. He can swear he can feel toes twitching in his shoes like they always used to when he was preparing for a life-or-death mission. Spying. Just doing the thing he used to be the very best at. Sneaking in, slinking in and out of the shadows, not stopping before the information you need is in your hands. And getting out alive enough to make use of it.

**Any feedback at all is appreciated. See mistakes or strange phrasing? Do not hesitate to tell me! Hope you enjoyed! **


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: I was supposed to upload this BEFORE I went on vacation, but the packing-stress got to me and I completely forgot! Please forgive me, and enjoy the latest chapter!**

A tremble runs through him at the idea of spying, not sure if the shudders are from excitement or terror, and he runs a hands over his face. Tomorrow the teams are going to relocate, the only moment to find out why was now. No procrastinating, no excuses. His stomach flips as he slowly starts making his way to the BLU base. He has a feeling that this is the Medic's doing, or at least the BLU team. He dreads going near the man again, but it's more important to know what BLU is doing than what idiotic idea RED conjured up.

He can hear the children playing and chirping from within the pipes, but he does not go to them, swimming through the pipes as quickly as he can. Finding out what is going on has priority right now, no matter how much the children's almost loveable sounds beg for him to come back to them. He wants to watch them play and swim, but his mission is more important. They'd never swim and play for long without things to feed on. Spy swears he can hear one of the children laughing as he continues on his way to the BLU base.

A strange sense of nostalgia comes rushing back at him when he inches along the shadows in the sewers, like he had so many times before in mostly successful attempts to get past the front lines. Memories and trivia about both bases fill his thoughts as he quickly makes his way to the most convenient and safe entrance to the BLU base: the maintenance shaft of the sewer systems. It's poorly hidden behind a half-submerged grate that only clings onto the wall in a thick layer of grime, and looks like it's been torn off and replaced on numerous occasions. No doubt by the spies that came before him.

A wretched stench drifts from behind the grate, forcing a disgusted gag from Spy. He tries not to think about the piled up junk inside the maintenance shaft, and starts breathing through his mouth instead of his nose. It's not much of an improvement, but it keeps him from going green. He pulls carefully at the grate, the iron groaning slightly as he scrapes it past the concrete surrounding it. A few loose screws plop into the water next to him, and then the way into the maintenance shafts is clear.

Spy slips into the small pipe with little difficulty, and pulls the grate back over the entrance with his tentacles. He had thought the sewers disgusting, but this was a whole new level of grime and filth. It's dark, and every time his hands touch the ground, he feels something different lying beneath them. A wrench, some sort of hat... He ignores the random items littering the shafts and continues crawling through the dark tunnels. The only light is a dim maintenance bulb barely visible beneath a thick layer of unrecognizable sludge.

At least those days of memorizing the entire base layout will finally pay off. Without wasting a moment, Spy starts clambering his way through the layer of murky water that lies in the tunnels. He doesn't have to go far...A few turns, and then—

There! A dull light greets him when he rounds the corner, a single grate shining light onto the filthy waters like a flashlight, unidentifiable strings of filth hanging from the small openings between the bars. The maintenance hatch. How many times had the Engineer descended into this filthy place to fix whatever damage the team had done to the system? Like the time where a certain Scottish someone had managed to flush an entire tower of hats down the toilet after a night of heavy drinking...

Only rarely did someone enter the maintenance rooms, let alone during the times where nothing needed to be fixed. It was only a short way from the grate to the air-vents, and then he'd be all set. There wasn't much time, the smell of the sewers would undoubtedly attract attention, but hopefully he'd know what he had to know before they started to search the vents. He slips his tentacles around the grate, and as silently as he can, he lifts it, thanking the gods this team had been too stupid to lock the gra—CLANK. The loud sound echoes into the pipes, and Spy chokes on his breath at the unexpected loud noise.

Locked!? No... That couldn't be right! His team-the BLU team never locks this grate! Heck, they barely lock the room to the intelligence in all their stupidity!

Spy curses under his breath, and pulls himself up to the grid. A large metal padlock hangs from the bars, clearly recently purchased. He squeezes the tip of a tentacle between the bars, his hands too big to fit through, and pulls experimentally at the lock. Ah. Key-based. Spy lets out a relieved at the feel of such a familiar lock. He had been picking things like these for as long as he can remember!

It sets his mind at ease, if not for a little bit, to know that the person who put the lock there probably didn't do so with a Spy in mind. Even the Heavy would know that a simple lock like this one was child's play for a spy! He lets himself down from the grate, feeling through the grime for something that can be used as a lockpick. There is more than enough trash to choose from, and in the end he managed to find a thin piece of metal, just the right size to open the lock with.

He curls his tentacles around the grid again, and starts awkwardly picking at the lock, the piece of metal slipping slightly in his grip. The smallest piece of the metal slips easily into the lock, and with a wave of warm nostalgia he pops the lock open, and it slips through the bars, falling into his awaiting hand soundlessly. "Perfect..." He reaches up to the grid and gives it a small push, already slipping a few tentacles onto the edge to pull himself up. A door is suddenly thrown open, and Spy almost bites his tongue off at the scare, almost dropping the heavy grate and the lock. As quickly as he dares he soundlessly lowers the grit, his heartbeat loud in his ears. The BLU Engineer walks into the room, looking uneasy and being followed by a clearly content looking Medic. It's only pure luck that they don't notice the tentacles slipping back into the maintenance shaft.

"-you show it to me?" A shiver runs through the Spy at the familiar voice echoing down the sewer grid, but his curiosity makes him stay, lingering beneath the grate to listen in on the conversation. Why would they pick this room of all places to converse? The conference room would be a much better choice to speak about secretive things...

A fluttering sound of fabric being pulled through the air reaches Spy's ears, and the Medic is the first to speak again. "Ah! So this is it?" The Engineer is quick to answer, sounding incredibly proud of himself.

"Yup, I finished it, and minor tweaking aside it's all ready for tomorrow!"

Any joy regarding his return to eavesdropping and sneaking around fades immediately at the man's words. What is this about? The Medic speaks up again, and with ill panic, Spy forces himself stay perfectly still as he listens.

"Zhat's perfect! We'll be just in time for the battle in Thunder Mountain!" Someone rustles with paper, and the Engineer answer sounds distracted. "Mmmyup. Sounds about right!"

"Sehr Gut. I will go help our team with packing, the earlier they are out, the sooner we can start."

A door is closed, and Spy can hear boots fading away from behind the door. What does this mean? What plan?! Spy holds his breath, and then silently wraps his hands around the bars in the grate to look into the room. The Engineer's back is turned to him as he stands by a pin-board on the wall, huge blueprints and small notes of all sorts scattered over it. A large metal machine stands in the corner, obstructed by a dirty white sheet and several boxes. Steadily, he lifts the grate, and pulls himself up, straining to get a better look at the blueprints. His heart is beating wildly in his chest, as it always does when he is sneaking.

The engineer mumbles something under his breath, and pulls out a notepad, copying numbers and sizes from the sheets in front of him. Spy cranes his neck and stares past the engineer, catching a good view of the blueprints. One shows the river openings, with extensive measurements written all over it in messy black marker, and another one shows an overly complicated machine, the one most recognizable thing being a big tube coming from the side.

A draining machine.

A shiver runs over Spy's back, and he clenches his jaw. They want to drain the sewers? Shut off access to the river?! The engineer throws a ball over paper over his shoulder and Spy almost jumps at the unexpected move. Maybe... maybe he could take out the Engineer... right here and now. He makes a slow move forward, pulling himself out of the shafts inch by inch. He could strangle him, try to sabotage the machine... His nails make a slight ticking sounds when he puts them down, but the Engineer doesn't react. The very last of Spy's tentacles slip quietly from the grate, and he closes in on his target.

The shotgun hangs from the man's hips, and Spy leans forward, eyes flicking nervously from the Engineer to the gun. It'll be risky... but... He curls his fingers around the shotgun, and slowly tries to lift it out of its holster. He knows he has failed the very moment he can hear the Engineer take a sharp intake of breath.

Without waiting for the man to turn around, he throws himself at the startled engineer with as much fury as he can muster, hands going for the throat.

"WHAT THE-!" A panicked flail hits Spy square in the jaw, and Spy's head spins from the impact. His claws cut into the Engineer's face, and the smell of blood that suddenly fills the air makes Spy's stomach jump. He throws himself against the Engineer, and forces the stocky man to the ground with an animalistic scream, his hands finding the throat and squeezing it shut. His tentacles tremble in effort and adrenaline as the Engineer struggles violently in their grip.

The man has no chance against the Spy, and his struggles become weaker and weaker as his face grows more and more the colour of his shirt. Spy breathes heavily, and pulls his hands off the corpse. It'd been a very, very long time since he'd had to strangle a man like that. He turns around, and crawls awkwardly towards the machine. If he could get behind that panel on the bottom and cut all the wires- "Herr Engineer, what-"

Spy's blood runs cold at the voice that sounds from behind him. The Medic. His eyes flick over to the hatch in panic. Open. Without a single doubt he dives towards the hatch, landing face first into the disgusting ooze lying everywhere. He claws his way through the sludge blindly, going straight for the exit. He swears he can hear boots splashing through the murky waters and the sound of sedative shots hitting the water behind him as he flees, but he doesn't look back.

The very moment he reaches the deeper waters of the sewers, he dives under, instinctively seeking refuge from within the shadows. No footsteps sound from above him, nor does he see a moving shadow. He wasn't followed?

He lingers in the shadows, straining to hear anything besides the sound of the water. Nothing. Slowly he swims further and further away from the BLU base, expecting the Medic to appear at any moment, but all keeps silent. Not that it would matter much if he got away now, tomorrow the water would drain, and he'd be nothing more than a fish on dry land! He can still feel the skin on his tentacles ache from the few hours he spent outside the water a day earlier. How would he ever hope to survive or stay hidden in a waterless environment for longer than a day, let alone escape within that time!?

He reaches the river, and resurfaces, looking out for any signs of being followed. Nothing. All is peacefully silent. He doesn't feel relieved, only more worried for the fate of both him and the creatures lying inside the pipe. He swims towards the barred openings in the wall that enable the river's flow, and looks through the bars. On the riverbank just outside of the wall, lies a large metal shutter. Several toolboxes surround the shutter, and Spy can hear the beeps of a mini-sentry stationed close by. How had this happened without his notice?! Why hadn't he heard the loud clanging of wrench on steel, or noticed the Engineer standing outside of the walls?! Spy's stomach rolls, and he frantically goes over his options. Climbing over the walls is impossible with his limbs as they are, breaking the bars is not an option, and hiding would only prolong the inevitable. There's not enough time!

"I am not... I just need..." He turns his back on the bars, and swims his way over to what has become his home over the days. He isn't prepared for the wave of sorrow that hits him when he spots the pipe. It's almost humorous. Where luxurious vacation homes and beautiful hotel rooms had often before left him feeling sorry to leave, a dirty sewer pipe now does the same. It really has become a home to him over the last days. The children greet him with hungry gazes and cries for attention, crawling onto his arms and tentacles enthusiastically.

All of them will perish here with him at this rate, all of these strange and clingy creatures. He raises one of the child to eye level, stroking it over the head while trying to avoid it's chew-happy teeth. A few others swim up to join their siblings in the game of 'bite the hand'. So small, yet so active already, such quick learners... He had never cared too much for children, but he can only guess that the burning concern and tinge of pity are the feelings that come with fatherhood. This is what it is like to be a father. These children feel truly different, more endearing and honest to god more likable than the snotty brats he encountered in restaurants that threw their food around the place. He doesn't want to see them die.

The child in his hands makes a predatory dive for his finger and chews on the nail with a growl, crawling all around his hand in furious enthusiasm. They are small enough. Even if he could not, the children could fit through those bars with ease, and find their way to the sea. A lump forms in his throat, and he tries to swallow it down futilely. There is no way he'll be able to outrun the Medic and the Engineer, let alone with the children following him, and even if he could do it, how would he feed them?

The children around him whine, biting hungrily at his skin to show their obvious appetite.

It's a hard choice. He could keep them with him, dying in the presence of his …. creatures. Or he could let them escape, wasting away on his own without the knowledge of their survival. He wants to be selfish, keep them with him, and hold them close for comfort when he ends it. It'd be a death he might even be able to enjoy, hearing his children make those awfully loud noises again in his last few moments.

He'd be condemning them.

If he let them go with the current of the river... He'd be dying alone. Cold and tense, huddled away in the empty nest without any sounds besides his own breathing, waiting for death without even knowing of their survival. Would they even survive beyond a few days? Could they adapt fast enough to survive without Spy's help?... Spy yelps when one of the children bites into his ear harshly, and he cautiously touches the concha, feeling a small wound at the top where the sharp little teeth had punctured his skin in hunger. He lets out a sigh, and buries his face in his hands, letting the child continue it's biting at his ear. It's unfair. So incredibly unfair...

He doesn't want to lose them either way! Not to the Medic, and not to the river... At the very least letting them escape would give them a chance at survival... Maybe they will be the ones to find a home within sunken ships, or become a legend in a secluded lake, or discover long lost cities beneath the endless waters...

He slowly forces himself up and gently brushes the children off him. "Come with me..." He turns around and swims out of the pipe, hearing the creatures set in the chase with excited chirps. He refuses to think, straining to keep his thoughts chained to the sound of his breathing. The current picks up as they enter the river, and the children immediately cling to Spy's body, too weak to fight the streaming waters. Spy lets the current drag him to the pipes, feeling more like swimming away than really letting them go. The lump in his throat feels like it's choking him, and he carefully peels one of the children off his arm.

It curls itself around his fingers, nuzzling it affectionately before looking up at him with a questioning glance.

"Mon Dieu... I don't... I don't even know what gender you are..."

He brings his shaking hand to the gate to freedom, and then nudges the child off his hand. The creature's expression immediately turns into one of terror and panic as the current drags it down the river, and it starts screaming, desperately trying to swim back to Spy and utterly failing to do so. The other children go rigid at the alarming screams, digging their claws deeply into Spy's skin and staring after their disappearing sibling with wide eyes.

Their eyes turn to Spy, gazes filled with incomprehension, fear and confusion. It's almost painful to see them like that, and Spy cannot help but try and reassure them. "Really, it... it is for your own good, trust me..." It doesn't feel that way. It feels as if he is the one cutting them open instead of the Medic, mercilessly paining them without use. Nonetheless, he continues, pulling another child's nails loose from his flesh and sending it flailing down the river.

Its screams tear at him, and he does not dare look at the rest of the children anymore, fearing the look in their eyes. As quickly as he can he yanks them loose and throws them through the bars, not allowing himself the time to watch them cry out in fear as they futilely try to get back to him. He doesn't stop until he is the only living creature remaining by the gate.

He can no longer hear them cry, or feel them cling to him in fear and panic. The cuts on his skin from where their nails tried to hold onto him ache as the only reminders of the children he birthed. He lets himself sink down to the bottom of the sewer and lies on his back, looking at the surface of the softly flowing river. This is it, then.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

**I can't believe I'm almost finished! Enjoy.**

Spy sinks down to the bottom of the sewers, and stares through the bars. It's probably not a good idea to linger by the opening, but he can't draw away just yet, even though there is no purpose in staying.

There's nothing he can do. The shutters will be in place soon, and then he'll have no place to go but straight onto the Medic's surgery table. He should probably go back to the pipe, and try to block off the entrance to stay hidden, but the idea is already rejected when he thinks of it. There is nothing waiting for him there, and he may just as well stay outside, where he can see sunlight.

He should be planning for escape, or sabotaging the machine, but he doesn't move from his spot. He'll do it later... Whenever that 'later' may be.

Spy rolls himself onto his stomach almost languidly, and lets his head rest on the ground, staring at the specks of sand and dirt rolling past him in the flow of the river. He curls one of his tentacles around his arm in an attempt to comfort himself and carefully runs his hands over the small cuts his children had left in his arms when he tried to send them away.

Above the water, he can hear Engineer approaching the bars, whistling an upbeat little song as he begins his work. Spy's mind wanders, and he listens to the man work. It feels like that 'life-flashes-before-eyes' experience right before the world goes dark, but then in slow motion and with a chipper whistle accompanying it.

The water around Spy stops flowing when the Engineer forces the shutter further before the opening, and the view of the river is taken from his vision. The walls tremble as thick steel bolts force the shutter to the wall.

Spy rolls himself onto his side and turns to face the other and now only opening to the river. The whistle disappears behind the wall, and Spy forces himself up so he can go home. For probably the first time, the word "home" doesn't conjure images of a tidy and cozy small house in the suburbs of a small french town, but rather a dark wet place, hidden away from the world in complete safety.

He swims into the pipe, and lets himself drift to the bottom in the far back. He swears he can still hear the chirps of his children, crying for food and biting him in their strange way of showing affection.

Something brushes against his cheek as doesn't conjure imageshe lies down, and Spy's insides clench in panic at the unexpected touch, and he swats the thing away with the back of his hand. A high pitched cry of pain cuts through the water, and Spy immediately freezes. It's a sound he knows all too well, and his face is torn between smile and horror. It sounds like one of the babies.

A moment later he's frantically searching through the entire pipe, the tips of his tentacles curling nervously as they roam the ground in search for the lost child. He finds it near the entrance, dazedly rolling around in the water. Gently he picks it up and strokes it over its head with a trembling hand. Strange-looking olive coloured bruises cover its skin, and Spy immediately recognizes it as the child he almost crushed a few days earlier. He doesn't know how to comfort the scared child, so he does what he imagines mothers do, letting it cry and holding it against him as lovingly as he can manage.

Its cries slow to a sniffle, and after a few minutes, it takes a very tentative nip at Spy's skin in the show of affection Spy has come to love. He brings the child up to his face and gives it a nuzzle, coaxing a hesitant giggle out of the child.

He leans his back against the pipe's inside, and plays a bit with the small creature, watching it crawl up over his arm.

The moment stretches into minutes, and all is fine. He doesn't want to think of his problems, at least not in these perfect moments, but the more time he spends with the child, the more apparent the problems force themselves upon him. The river is closed off, and now the child is here to die with him! He pulls the creature even closer to him and it squirms in worry, clearly remembering last time where he'd been held a little too tightly.

It's already too late to let it escape in the same way as it's brethren. If he is going to get this child to safety, it'll have to be over land, or over the immense wall pulled up around the battlegrounds. The baby clambers up over his stomach and paws at his face, and Spy puts it back down by his tentacles, watching it climb up and tumble back down when it can't find leverage to hang on.

Medic wouldn't get his hands on this one. Even if he had to chop himself to bits to be able to get the child to the river, he'd do it gladly! He has nothing to lose, and everything to win. Spy closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath, willing his hesitance aside.

Delay of execution is all he can do now, and it vaguely reminds him of the work he did as a Spy. Sentries would always be built no matter how many he sapped, and the enemy Heavy would always be mowing down his team, even if he dominated the hunk of fat for the entire day. The longer he delays his capture, the more likely it will be for the Administrator to cut in and send the Medic on his way to a battle! He'll still be stuck in this indestructible hunk of war ground, but maybe he'll be able to find a way out before they starve.

The rest of his thoughts get lost as an sudden unpleasant low hum buzzes through the water. It's like a humongous drum rumbling without stop, as if rolling down a hill with stones inside, and it's maddening. For a moment Spy thinks that another being of the mystical world has shown up, like the HHH or Monoculus, until he realizes where the sound originates from. They started the draining machine!

His stomach coils and the tips of his tentacles curl. He starts for the BLU base, but a frightened chirp stops him in his tracks. The child had fallen off him when he had gotten up, and is hurriedly crawling over to him with wide yellow eyes. He should leave it behind in the pipe, collect it after his 'mission', but he can't bring himself to part with the creature so soon after finding it again. He curls one of his tentacles around the baby, and departs from the pipe for what may as well be the last time.

The sound of the machine is everywhere, and even the walls seem to hum along with the low tune of the machine, but it's not hard to figure out where they are draining the sewers. He knows how the Engineer works when placing his structures, and he knows there are only two efficient places to drain water through a tube while effectively protecting it. The maintenance shaft exits on the BLU and RED sides. He goes to the BLU base first, betting on finding the draining machine there.

He is right, partly. From the BLU maintenance tunnel hangs an enormous tube in the water, draining water from the sewers at a far faster pace than he'd expected. He can feel the water streaming past him, rushing towards the dark tube and pulling at him to come along. Several sentries and their Engineer are holding guard on the ledge above it. From where Spy hides he can barely spot the Engineer, as hidden as he is behind one of his blueprints. The sentries are placed perfectly around the maintenance tunnel, set in such a way to cover the other, and the last one in the chain being protected by the Engineer himself. Sneaking past it would be a no-go if he wanted to live, and the same went for crawling over dry sand!

A string of unidentified grime is sucked into the dark rubbery depths of the tube like a rope of lint succumbing to a vacuum cleaner, and Spy takes special note not to meet the same fate. Getting stuck in machinery wouldn't help one bit right now...

Unless that machine dumps the water outside the base!

Spy chews on his lip. It's a far-fetched plan, but considering the strangeness of the RED and BLU war, it's not impossible. Disabling the machine is top priority, but now he has a little expansion on that plan; entering the machine on the chance that freedom lies at the end.

Getting into the base shouldn't be too much trouble, the hatch being big enough for him to squeeze through even with the humongous tube hanging out, and once the machine is disabled getting into the machine wouldn't pose a problem. It's the sentries. They would riddle him with bullets if he'd even show an inch of skin within their range!

No cloaking devices, no sappers, no teammates to back him up, no knife, and an Engineer covering every single one of his six sentries with a shotgun. Spy frowns at the odds, and tries to spy a weakness in the formation of the sentries, hoping for enough cover to sneak by, or for a way to drag the machines into the water.

A hunk of trash slowly drags a line in the sand next to Spy, and he curls a few tentacles around it. He'd hidden behind a dispenser before, who said a piece of trash wouldn't work? He quickly skims the sewer floors for any usable objects, and comes up with a few flat pieces of plating, undoubtedly from a destroyed dispenser.

It's almost too small for him even if he curls himself into a small ball, and swimming behind it is completely out of the question. He'll have to drag himself over the sandy floor with the Dispenser-plate as cover. There are a few dents and remaining tubes inside of the metal, and Spy awkwardly curls his tentacles around the protrusions.

He moves slowly over the sewer floor, and every off-beat beep the sentries causes him to freeze and press himself behind his cover. The water being sucked out through the tube pulls stronger at his measly shield the closer he gets, and about halfway to the shafts it flies out of his grip, clunking against the tube opening and whirling to the bottom uselessly.

Spy immediately swims for the safety of the maintenance shafts, almost getting sucked into the draining machine in the process, but his effort is unneeded. The sentries stay idle above the water, acknowledging him as a friendly target with a monotone beep.

The engineer had forgotten to remove his signature from the list of friendly targets! It was just like him too, to forget such small things when preoccupied with something else.

Spy immediately squeezes himself through the small gap between the wall and the tube, and wrestles his way through. It's even nastier then it was before, the goop all pushed up inside the shafts due to the large tube, and the remaining baby gasps weirdly. Spy would have held it underwater, but he can hardly call the carpet of revolting filth 'water', so he keeps the child as far away from it as he can. At the end of the tunnel he looks more like a mud monster than he resembles anything human-like, everything but his back and the child smeared in muck.

The opening is completely unsecured besides a sentry beeping away by the door, but after a few quick waves with a tentacle, Spy finds it to be a friendly machine as well. With significant effort, Spy wrestles himself up and clambers out of the shaft, splattering mud and dirt all over the room. The tube runs further over the floor, coiling sharply around the door frame and into the halls.

He crawls along the tube as fast as he can, which is far slower than he'd like, slithering over the smooth floors with the elegance of an eel in a layer of grease. Even when he hooks his nails into the outside of the tube to drag himself along he doesn't gain too much speed. He has never felt more gawky and out of practice in his entire life, and the effort is telling on him.

He tells himself not to worry. All he has to do is disable the machine, avoid the two mercenaries on his tail, and then clamber through the tube. It doesn't sound easy when he says it to himself, not even when he puts up his most convincing voice and says it out loud.

He continues to follow the tube, slipping through empty hallways that had one point been filled with crazy anti-commie posters made by the Soldier, and unicorn drawings from the Pyro. It's strangely unsettling to find the hallways so bare, and Spy keeps his gaze locked to either the tube or the child held in his tentacle. The buzzing is soon joined by a low mechanical hum through the empty corridors, and he knows the machine is close by. A few rooms ahead, just past the-

"Ach, hold still vill you? It will be a very short trip, mein schatzen..."

Spy stops dead in his tracks and flattens himself behind the tube when the German accent floats over the machine's noise. A few rooms ahead, just past the med-bay, and it's most common habitant; the Medic. Sure Spy had expected the man to be somewhere within the building, but it doesn't make the encounter any less startling.

He continues to move slowly past the doors, hidden behind the immense tube, and tries to hear any indication of the Medic coming closer through the noise of the machine. The child in his tentacle whines nervously, and Spy hastily smothers the sound with a tentacle, gaining a frightened bite in response. He listens anxiously, already making a plan of attack for when the Medic comes to investigate, but he hears nothing besides the machine, and the Medic does not show himself.

He starts moving again, seeing the tube curl into the last room at the end of the hallway.

Spy slowly inches along the tube, his eyes flicking between the path ahead and the open doors to the medbay, where the Medic can barely be heard moving things around. The spawn squirms in his hands, still trying to utter its disagreement through the Spy's muffling tentacle, and Spy has the hardest time keeping the child silent while attempting to move forward.

He is barely past the door when a painfully familiar sound makes him stop dead in his tracks. The pitiful cry of a baby. Every muscle in his body seems to freeze at the alarming sound, and he shoots a withering look at the child in his hold finding it staring back at him with wide eyes, still effectively muffled.

"Ach, don't be so dramatic kindern! It is just a little trip, nothing to be scared of." The crying stops for a moment, only to continue at an even higher pitch a few moments later, and other small voices join in the cacophony. Spy immediately turns back, almost falling on his face when clambering over the tube, and dares a peek inside the medbay.

The Medic is standing in front of a small aquarium, dumping its content into a nearby sink, and right beside him, on a wet towel, lie five tentacled babies. Their tentacles curled tightly around them, their pale skin is covered in tiny bruises and wounds, and similar to the child he took with him to this place, their breath is raspy and shallow out of the water.

Spy draws back from the doors, and sets down the spawn a good distance from the door before sneaking back to the med-bay. His chances do not look bright, unarmed against a fully equipped mercenary... Well, he survived similar situations with only the element of surprise with him, so maybe it will do the trick this time as well. He scans the room quickly, hoping to find something that could serve as a knife, but he finds the bay almost completely bare, save for a pile of cardboard boxes and some beds.

No choice but to go in and do the best he can. The noise of the machine overpowers the ticking of Spy's nails on the plain tiles, and the Medic continues to shove a heap of instruments into a box with his back turned to the door.

He comes closer and closer, until he can smell the stock washing powder stuck in the white coat, and then he leaps forward with as much force as he can muster, hitting the Medic in the knees and sending them both tumbling to the floor. The Medic's cry of surprise is lost in the cacophony of the machine and the box of instruments clattering to the floor. He presses Medic down to the floor with all of his weight, taking advantage of the man's awkward position, and wraps his hands around the Medic's neck, slamming his face into the corner of the bureau and wrapping his tentacles around the man to restrain him.

The doctor's struggles become weaker and weaker the longer Spy holds him down, until he is dead. Spy pulls his hands and tentacles loose from the corpse and rolls it over, flexing his pained fingers. It had been far easier than he'd expected.

He grabs the children off the table and tries not to be distracted by the weak purrs and nuzzles directed at him as he continues with his mission. After making sure he has them all, he speeds out of the medbay, making a beeline for the last room in the hall.

The machine standing in the middle of the room is gross and clunky, obviously designed in a short amount of time and without any eye for decoration whatsoever. The control panel is non-existent, instead a jumbled mess of wires buttons and chips hang from a large open hole in the machine, a few loose ends almost hanging into the thin layer of water covering the floor. The machine itself is bolted against the wall, and this close to the machine, Spy can finally place the rumbling noise that shakes the base. Water, rushing from a height and splashing down on the ground.

He hurries over to the control 'panel', and pulls the heap of wires and chips towards him. It's of simple construction with limited options that barely go beyond 'machine off' and 'machine on'. After a small examination of the wire connections, he gives a good pull at the wires, and with a sputtering sound the machine falls silent. The rushing of water slowly drains to a halt and the pumps stop working. The sudden lack of noise makes him feel deaf, but he tries to pay it no mind. The Medic must have respawned by now, and with the machine's noise disabled, getting to the opening of the tube undetected will be a little bit harder.

He pulls out a good bunch of wires to ensure the machine wouldn't activate before his escape, and then returns to the hallways.

His hands are surprisingly steady as he continues to drag himself along the thick tube, and he speaks soothing words to the exhausted children accompanying him. Doors and windows pass him, and he gets closer and closer to the maintenance shaft. He can hear the guard-sentry beeping, and almost hidden beneath the sound a pair of heavy boots coupled with harsh sounding foreign curses approaches through the hallway.

He doesn't allow himself to turn around and look when he hears the sound of syringes hitting the floor, and scrambles into the maintenance room. He almost throws himself down the shaft, scraping a good part of his skin and almost dropping a few of the children in the process. He wades through the sludge, and tries to ignore the sounds of the Medic attempting to follow him into the maintenance shaft. He is almost thankful for his tentacles now, their strength and bend-ability far superior in the wet enclosed shafts.

He reaches the end of the shaft and lets himself fall in the waters below. He wrings himself into the dark tube as quickly as he can, hoping fervently for the Engineer not to have seen him. He curls all available tentacles around the children and holds them onto his back awkwardly as he drags himself along over his stomach. The tube itself is humid, tiny and dark, and after only a few breaths it feels as if there isn't enough oxygen to stay alive.

When he had followed the tube in the hallways of the BLU base, it had seemed long. Now it seemed endless. Only by the sudden ascend of the tube can he tell that he is passing through the maintenance shaft. The children continue to cry, and even though Spy worried over being discovered, there isn't much he can do to calm them besides softly patting them on their heads. The rubber of the tube muffles the sound of their crying, and it makes for the illusion that he is not moving forward at all, but stuck in the same 2 meters of rubber and doomed to crawl through it over and over.

It seems hours later when the tube finally ends, leading him through a half-open door and under the pump that could squash him like a fly. The doors on the other side are half-closed, and light spills inside through a small crack.

Spy doesn't waste a second, and rushes towards the exit with the power of a lunatic. He barely fits through the stubborn door, and takes a tumble down, almost breaking an arm at the landing. The river is running along the wall, great loads of water escaping to all the sides for lack of a proper bedding. The ground is tough beneath a small layer of mud, and Spy pulls his way along the wall, keeping the children well above the muddy water.

The river is calmer than it was before the engineer installed the shutters, and loads of dust and dirt lift on the stream. He will have to crawl along some more, until the river gets deeper, and so he does. He still fears the men back at the base, remembering a time where the BLU Sniper had explained the finer details of sniping to the entire team (against their will), but no blue dots follow him as he moves his way along through the river further and further away from the base.


	9. Chapter 9

**Last part! **

-

It's a few hours of struggling later when the small river is joined by another stream of water, and almost immediately the water deepens. Grass is growing sparsely on the banks, and Spy can see birds flying past above them.

Even though the stream carries him along, Spy soon finds himself tired, and he lies down on the riverbank, in the shade of a small tree. The children are quiet, and instead of their love bites, they just drool over whatever part of him they had in their grip, too tired to do much else.

Spy gathers them in his arms and holds them close. One of them gives him a tired gurgle, and happily curls itself around Spy's arm. "I'm happy you all take after me in that respect. Never obeying anyone's expectations." He tickles one of the children, causing it to roll off him with a recurring hiccup that he assumes is a laugh.

He joins in with a laugh of his own, and replaces it in his arms. Even though there are six of them, his arms still feel empty. Only six from the original thirty two. He looks down the length of the river, his smile fading. This isn't over until he finds all of them in one piece, and gets them together where they belong.

He slips back into the river with the children and they continue on their way. The further and further he gets, more small streams of water join the river, and when the night starts to fall, he can almost say he's swimming instead of dragging through a layer of water. The river has become broader as well, and the banks are high, and littered with large trees. The babies start falling asleep as soon as the sun dips below the horizon, their grip on his arm loosening, and Spy curls them in several of his tentacles to make sure they don't drift off. When everything has gone completely dark, Spy finds that the river becomes a lot more difficult to navigate in pitch-black darkness. He can no longer tell where the riverbanks are, nor stones in the bottom, and the water streams faster and faster.

He reaches out for where he thinks the riverbank is, but he claws over rock and ground, unable to get out of the river. The current pulls at him strongly, the water flying up high with a loud roar, and a moment later, they're completely weightless in a free-fall. Spy opens his mouth to yell, but before he can well utter a sound, they all plummet into water with a painful back flop.

Panic breaks out in the dark, and Spy scrambles to see what happened as the children nearly rip his skin off in their attempts to stay with their father through the strong waters. He barely knows what's up or down as they spin round and round in the wild current, and he gets smacked into more than just one stone before the force of the water weakens and allows him to drift to the bottom.

His head spins and he feels awfully sick. The children seem to share his dislike for being spun around, and a few of them lose their stomach's content in the water. Spy barely notices, far too happy to feel solid, unmoving ground beneath, and calm waters around him. Finally a place to sleep. Or pass out. He curls up on a patch of sand in between several rocks and he feels the children climbing up to his arms. "Don't wake me up." He doesn't stay awake for an answer.

–

Spy is awoken roughly when a screeching creature slams into his face and bites his nose. He jumps up from his lying position and all the children still lying on his stomach go flying in the water as he yanks it from his face and tosses it off him.

Disoriented and alarmed, he scans the waters around for any sort of danger, only to find the waters calm, and the entire nest scrambling in panicking. Spy curses and pulls back the children that are fleeing from the nest and sends an angry glare at the child that woke him. "Mon dieu! What has gotten into you?!"

The offending child takes no notice of Spy's words, nor the panic it caused, and it once again swims at Spy, this time latching onto one of Spy's tentacles and slobbering all over it with cry-like laughter. Tentatively Spy reaches out for the child. "Garcon, eh... fille...tout ce que, are you feeling alright?..." As soon as his hand makes contact with the child's head it switches its death grip from the tentacle to Spy's hand, nuzzling into his palm almost obsessively and continuing its weird hiccuping.

Spy frowns at the curious behavior, and after a short moment of investigating the child for wounds or anything else, he blames its erratic behavior on night-terrors or a frightening looking fish. The rest of the children have slowly calmed down, going from high-pitched screeches to silent whines, and are hiding behind the Spy. He irritably gathers them all in his arms again and tries to coax them back into sleep, before realizing the sky is already becoming lighter and then opting for just leaving them alone for a while. He turns away from the children, and then he sees their surroundings.

The early morning light is weak and watery, but in it's wake he sees only dipping ground stretching out in front of him, with a jagged rock wall a few meters from his side. The water is filled with the sound of rushing, as if a humongous faucet is constantly running and in the sparse light he can just about see the ripples that a waterfall makes when it hits the surface. He is far deeper in the water than he thought, three times his own length of water above him, and a ravine cutting deeply into the bottom further on. Several groups of large fish swim about, and absolutely everything with rocks, car tires, litter, algae and plants.

He is just about to go 'investigate' the group of fish, when once again one of the children latches onto his face with a joyful screech.

Spy pries it from his face and gives it an angry glare. "Non! Stop it!" In response it bites into his hand and Spy's patience gets as thin as it can. He's about to start one hell of a preach when his stomach lets out a ferocious growl, and he decides to delay the preaching until after breakfast, putting the child next to its siblings with a warning glare.

"Now stay here, and I will come back with something to eat, alright?" He doubts they understand a word he's saying, but they don't follow him when he goes out to hunt for fish. As he's waiting for a group of fish to swim by close enough for him to catch one, he makes a little equation in his head. One fish for each of the children should be plenty, and maybe two for him, plus the leftovers.

It takes him a full hour chasing after the more edible looking creatures, but in the end he drags home several mangled fish bodies. The children smell the fish before they see it, and they swim towards him quickly, immediately digging into the fish as soon as they reach it. It's also the moment where Spy notices that his clutch of children has grown.

He checks, counting the children again, and it's true! Against his own expectations, he recognizes them within the group of eight, and strokes them over the head. "You found me!" He laughs. "I don't think I will ever be able to escape you all! Smart little things you are." They look a bit pudgier than the ones he saved from the medic, and their blue hue is more defined amongst their still pale siblings.

The fish is gone in the span of ten minutes, and the children lie sated on the lake floor. Spy himself had offered most of his fish to the children, but even though he was not as full as he'd have liked he was content. A few ducks swim over the water far above them, and everything is perfect. Spy stretches and gets up, beaconing for the children to follow him. the eight children following in his wake. "I think it is time to look for your siblings, and a new home. How about we start looking around that rock over there..."

-

**I thank you all, for reading this story, both it's faulty beginning and the (hopefully improved) end! Your advice and criticism have truly helped me develop as a writer, and that is invaluable to me. Thanks!**


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